You have created a linked filter so that (for example) if a dashboard contains both a “State” and a “City” filter, the “City” filter only shows cities in the state selected by the “State” filter. However:
If you are having problems with a regular filter widget, please see this guide. In order to fix problems with linked filters, you need a clear understanding of how they work:
Root cause: Linked filters are one of the more complex features of Metabase, and many problems stems from misunderstanding their operation.
Steps to take: Check that you understand the points below, and that your linked filter is set up with them in mind.
A filter isn’t part of a specific question. Instead, a filter is added to a dashboard and its value is used to fill in variables in questions.
In order for Metabase to display a dropdown list of possible filter values, it must know that the column corresponds to a category. This happens automatically if the question is created from tables via the Notebook Editor, since Metabase has knowledge about the table and columns from synchronization.
If the question that contains the variable is written in SQL, on the other hand, the author of the question must have selected “Field Filter”. Also, the field referenced must be set as a category in the Data Model in order for Metabase to show a dropdown list of values.
Root cause: The most common cause is that the filters have been linked in the wrong direction. If you want the values shown by Filter B to be restricted by the setting of Filter A, you have to change the settings for Filter B, not Filter A—i.e., the downstream filter has the setting, not the upstream filter.
Steps to take:
Root cause: There aren’t any rows that satisfy all the conditions in a linked filter. Continuing with the city and state example, if you manually enter the name of a city that isn’t in the selected state, no record will satisfy both conditions.
Steps to take:
Root cause: In some cases all of the rows that satisfy the first filter’s condition also satisfy the second filter’s condition, so the second filter has no effect.
Steps to take:
Root cause: In order for a linked filter widget to display the correct subset of values as a dropdown, an explicit foreign key definition must be set up—linking the filters does not by itself tell Metabase about the relationship.
Steps to take: