How to share a Power BI report as a link

Microsoft's sharing guide sets the conditions. You need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User license to share, unless the report sits in Premium capacity, and the people you share with need one as well, unless the content is in Premium or Fabric capacity. Someone outside your organization can only open it if your admin has turned on external sharing, and they sign in to Power BI before they see anything.

Publish to web removes the sign-in. Microsoft warns that anyone on the internet can then view the report, including detail-level data that the visuals summarize, and your admin has to allow it first. For a client update or a board pack, sending a file is simpler.

In the Power BI service, open the report and choose Export, then PDF or PowerPoint. Current values keeps the slicer and filter settings you have applied, and Default values exports the report as its designer shared it. A check box leaves out hidden pages, and another exports only the page on screen.

In Power BI Desktop, open the .pbix file and choose File, then Export, then Export to PDF. Microsoft documents the PowerPoint export in the service only.

Each report page becomes one page of the PDF or one slide of the deck, at 1,280 by 720 pixels. A PowerPoint slide is a picture of the page, and the first slide links back to the report and shows when its data last refreshed.

Send the PDF when people only need to read the report. It opens from the link in the browser, and every page keeps its layout. The PowerPoint file suits a colleague who wants your charts in their own deck, though each chart arrives inside a picture of the page, so they can't edit it. A .pptx link downloads the file rather than opening it, so for most readers the PDF is the one to send. You can still share a .pptx as a link beside it for anyone who asks for slides.

Upload the PDF and you get a short link that opens the report in the browser's own PDF viewer, with nothing to install and no Power BI sign-in. It works the same way as when you create a link to a PDF of any other document.

Every account shows how many times the link has been opened. Pro and Studio add the time and country of each open, so you can see when your link was opened before the review meeting.

A report pack goes out again next month with new numbers. When you replace the PDF in your dashboard, you swap the file without changing the URL, so the link in last month's email opens the current export. The open count carries over to the new file.

Read every page of the PDF before you upload it. Current values exports whatever filters you had set, and a visual you had scrolled comes out unscrolled, showing its first rows. Certified custom visuals export, other custom visuals don't, and an R visual can come out as a gray box with an error.

If the report carries a sensitivity label, the label and any encryption carry over to the PDF. An encrypted file opens only in a PDF reader that supports Microsoft Purview, for someone whose sign-in the encryption allows, and a link doesn't change that. Ask whoever manages the label before you share that export outside your organization.

Anyone who has the address can open a PDF link. If the report shouldn't travel past the people you send it to, put a password on the link, which needs a Pro or Studio plan.