Power BI supports exporting reports as PDF files, making it accessible for everyone in your company and audience, and convenient for archiving yearly reports. This guide will show you how to do this in just a few clicks.
There are different methods for exporting reports depending on whether you use Power BI Desktop or the Power BI Service (cloud). Since the Zebra BI visuals are certified by Microsoft, you can confidently export your reports knowing that all visuals will be included. Additionally, you can export reports directly as PowerPoint presentations.
Watch a video tutorial how to export your reports as PDF documents.
Export to PDF from Power BI Desktop
To create a PDF document from Power BI Desktop:
1. Navigate to File > Export > Export to PDF.
2. A progress notification will update you on the export status. This process may take a few minutes depending on your hardware.
3. A PDF document will be generated, containing all visible pages from your Power BI report. Note that hidden pages will not be exported.
The quality of the generated PDF is excellent. You can compare a sample published Power BI report with its PDF export to see the results.
Export to PDF from Power BI Service (Cloud)
To export a report from the Power BI Service:
1. Open your report
2. Click Export and choose PDF
3. You will be prompted with several customization options, such as including hidden report tabs and selecting specific pages to export.
Current values exports the report in the current state, incorporating the active changes you made to slicer and filter values. This option is used most often. Alternatively, selecting Default values exports the report in its original state, as shared by the designer, without reflecting any changes made to that original state.
There’s a checkbox to choose whether to export the hidden report tabs. Check it to export only visible tabs, or leave it unchecked to include all hidden tabs. If the checkbox is grayed out, there are no hidden tabs. After making your selections, click Export to proceed.
You can also check the Only export current page option to export just the current page you’re viewing. By default, this option is unchecked, exporting all pages from your report.
4. After clicking on export, the progress notification will appear at the top right corner informing you about the process
Limitations and other information
It’s important to be aware of the following limitations with Export to PDF option:
- Reports containing more than 50 report pages cannot be exported
- Reports exceeding 500 MB cannot be exported
- Reports owned by users outside your Power BI tenant domain, such as those shared by someone outside your organization, cannot be published to PDF
- Reports using themes with custom fonts will have these fonts replaced by default ones
- Visuals with scrollbars will be exported in their default state, displaying all visible rows starting from the first. Even if you have scrolled down in the visual, the export will show it unscrolled.
- Reports with non-standard custom page sizes may encounter export issues. For optimal results, consider using a standard page size.
- Visuals that are in a drilled-down state will be exported in their original undrilled state.
To learn about exporting reports into PowerPoint presentations follow our guide Exporting Power BI reports to PowerPoint slides
Enjoy creating and sharing your reports! 📊