Show/Hide Details
Show/Hide Details is a Salesforce report viewing option that toggles whether the individual record rows behind a grouped report appear or stay hidden.
Definition
Show/Hide Details is a Salesforce report viewing option that toggles whether the individual record rows behind a grouped report appear or stay hidden. When details are hidden, the groupings, subtotals, grand total, record counts, and summary formulas still show, but the underlying detail rows disappear from view.
It is a display setting applied at run time, not a change to how the report is built. The same report can be read as a high-level summary one moment and as a full record-level list the next, just by flipping the toggle.
How the detail toggle shapes what a report shows
What the toggle actually controls
The toggle governs one thing: whether the individual record rows inside a grouped report are visible. A summary or matrix report is built from raw rows that Salesforce then rolls up into groups. Each group can carry a subtotal, and the report carries a grand total. Hiding details collapses the report down to those rolled-up numbers and removes the row-by-row listing underneath. Salesforce is explicit about what survives when you hide details. The official Help page states that individual records stop displaying, while groupings, summary formulas, and record counts remain visible. So you keep the counts, the subtotals, the grand total, and any custom summary formulas you added. You lose only the granular rows that feed them. This matters because the data set does not change. Hiding details is purely visual. Every record that the report's filters and report type return is still being counted and summarized behind the scenes. You are choosing how much of that underlying data to put on screen, not narrowing the records the report pulls.
Classic button versus Lightning toggle
The control looks different depending on where you run the report. In Salesforce Classic it appears as a button labeled Show Details or Hide Details. On the run page you click Hide Details to collapse the rows and Show Details to bring them back. Inside the Classic report builder, the same setting lives under the Show menu as Details, with a checkmark indicating that detail rows are currently displayed. Lightning Experience reworks this into a footer toggle. On the run page and in the Lightning report builder preview pane, the footer carries switches for Row Counts, Detail Rows, Subtotals, and Grand Total. Sliding the Detail Rows toggle off hides the record-level rows, exactly like the Classic Hide Details button did. The Lightning version is more granular. Classic gave you one Show/Hide Details button. Lightning splits the controls so you can hide detail rows while keeping subtotals, or strip out subtotals while keeping counts. The Detail Rows toggle is the direct descendant of the old Show/Hide Details button.
Why it depends on the report format
The toggle only makes sense for grouped formats. A tabular report is a flat list of columns and rows with no grouping, so there is nothing to roll up and no detail toggle to flip. Tabular reports are details, all the way down. Summary reports group rows by one or more fields and add subtotals per group. Here the Detail Rows toggle is genuinely useful. Show details and you see every record under each group heading. Hide details and you keep the group headings with their subtotals while the rows tuck away. Matrix reports group by both rows and columns and produce a grid of summarized values. Salesforce guidance notes that matrix reports are usually easiest to read with details hidden, because the grid of subtotals is the point and the underlying rows clutter it. For matrix reports, hiding details is often the default reading mode rather than an occasional choice. Joined reports, which combine multiple report blocks, follow the same grouped logic where blocks contain summarized data.
One report, two audiences
The practical payoff is that a single report can serve very different readers. A regional director may only want the rolled-up numbers: total opportunities per stage, revenue per region, cases per team. A frontline manager often needs to open each group and inspect the actual records to coach reps or chase specific deals. Without the toggle you might build two reports, one summary-only and one detailed, then keep both in sync as criteria change. That doubles the maintenance and invites drift between them. The Show/Hide Details toggle removes that duplication. Both audiences read the same report and each flips the view to suit their need. Because the setting is applied at run time, two people can view the same saved report at the same moment in opposite states. One has details on, the other has them off, and neither change affects the other or the stored report definition. The report you save simply remembers its last detail state as the starting point for the next viewer.
Reading performance and clutter benefits
Hiding details is also a readability and load tool. A report grouped across thousands of records can render a very long page when every row shows. Collapsing to subtotals and the grand total turns that wall of rows into a compact, scannable summary that loads and scrolls faster. This is why analysts often default high-volume grouped reports to details hidden. The reader gets the shape of the data first, the totals and trends, and can expand a group only when a number looks worth investigating. It is a cleaner starting point than dropping someone into thousands of raw rows. Keep in mind the toggle is about what you see, not what Salesforce processes. Hiding details does not reduce the rows the report engine has to summarize, and it does not change row or column limits that apply to the report. It trims the rendered output and the visual noise, which is usually enough to make a dense grouped report comfortable to work with.
Who can use it and how it interacts with other settings
Using the toggle on the run page needs nothing special beyond access to the report itself. Anyone who can open and run the report can show or hide its details for their own view. Setting the saved default and editing the report require report editing rights, historically the Create and Customize Reports permission plus Report Builder access. The toggle plays nicely with the rest of the report. Filters still decide which records are included; hiding details does not filter anything out, it only stops the included rows from rendering. Subtotals and the grand total keep summing the same underlying data whether rows are shown or not. Summary formulas and bucket fields continue to calculate against the full result set. Field-level security still applies underneath. If a user cannot see a field, hiding or showing detail rows does not expose it. The detail toggle sits on top of these access and grouping rules. It changes the presentation layer only and leaves the report's logic, security, and stored definition untouched.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
- Show and Hide Report DetailsSalesforce
- Customize Report Views in the Run PageSalesforce
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Show/Hide Details.
- Show and Hide Report DetailsSalesforce
- Customize Report Views in the Run PageSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Show/Hide Details.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
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