Download any Power BI Report from the Power BI Service
I am sure we have all had it where there is Power BI report in the service which has been working for a long time. Then there is a requirement to make a change, and NO ONE can find the original PBIX.
There now is an easy way to download the Power BI Report or the Power BI Semantic model from the Power BI Service, and I will show you how to do this!
Even better it can be from ANY Workspace, be it a Pro, Premium Per User or Fabric workspace!
I must give a huge shout out to Gerhard Brueckl for his work creating Fabric Studio!
Example
It is best to use an example I am going to use, which makes it easier to follow.
I am going to download a semantic model called “Zwift Insider – Wheels Performance” in my App Workspace called “Public Shares”
I will also download a thin report called “Zwift Thin Report” in my App Workspace called “Public Shares”
Installing Fabric Studio
To install Fabric Studio, I first had to make sure I had Visual Studio Code installed (Visual Studio Code is free to use)
If you need to install Visual Studio Code, you can download it here: https://code.visualstudio.com/
Next, I had to install the Fabric Studio extension by completing the following steps.
- Click on Extensions on the left-hand side.
- Search for Fabric Studio
- NOTE: Make sure that it is by Gerhard Bruckl
- Click on Install
- If prompted to Trust the Publisher click on “Trust Publisher & Install” as shown below.
- Once it is installed, I could see it as shown below (When it has got the Uninstall button, it means it is successfully installed)
- I could now see the extension on the left-hand side.
Update Settings to show Pro Workspaces
By default, the Pro workspaces are not shown. Below are the steps to show the Pro Workspaces.
- On the Fabric Studio extension click on Settings
- Find the section “Show Pro Workspaces” and enable it as shown below.
- I recommend closing down Fabric Studio and opening it up for the settings to be applied.
Using Fabric Studio
Below are the steps for logging into Fabric Studio and finding my Workspace.
- I clicked on the Fabric Studio Icon; I was then prompted to Sign in
- I clicked on “Allow”
- I then logged in with my account which I use for my Power BI Service.
- Once logged in I can see the Fabric Workspaces in the top left corner
Downloading the Semantic Model
In the steps below I will now download the Semantic Model in my example “Zwift Insider – Wheels Performance” in my App Workspace called “Public Shares”
- NOTE: If you hover in the Fabric Workspaces there are some icons that appear near the top. I use the filter icon to filter and find my app workspace
- I navigate to my App Workspace called “Public Shares”
- I then clicked on my Semantic Model as shown below
- NOTE: The icon also identifies it as a Semantic Model
- I then right-click and select “Download as PowerBI Project (PBIP)
- I then get Prompted where I want to save the PBIP to.
- I saved this in my PBIP location
- I clicked on Save
- Once completed, I could see the confirmation on the bottom left-hand side.
- I could then see the downloaded files
- And when I went into the Semantic Model, I could then see the TMDL tables.
Downloading the Thin Report
In the steps below I will now download the thin report “Zwift Thin Report” in my App Workspace called “Public Shares”
- NOTE: If you hover in the Fabric Workspaces there are some icons that appear near the top. I use the filter icon to filter and find my app workspace
- I navigate to my App Workspace called “Public Shares”
- I then clicked on my Thin Report as shown below
- NOTE: The icon also identifies it as a Report.
- I then right-click and select “Download as PowerBI Project (PBIP)
- I then get a prompt asking if I want the Live Connection or the Local Dataset
- In my example I want the Live Connection, because I want the thin report.
- I then get Prompted where I want to save the PBIP to.
- I saved this in my PBIP location
- I clicked on Save
- Once completed, I could see the confirmation on the bottom left-hand side.
- I could then see the downloaded files highlighted below.
Summary
In this blog post I have shown you how you can download any Power BI Semantic Model or Report from the Power BI Service and get the all-important information
If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.
Thanks for reading!
[…] and create/update/delete items among other things; Gilbert Quevauvilliers recently wrote a nice blog post showing how you can use it to download any Power BI report from the Service […]
Hi Gilbert,
Does this work with PBIR too? Because it is hard to understand on Microsoft Learn and/or Community sites whether we can download reports from Service which are in PBIP/PBIR format.
Yes it does.
great pose Gilbert! Could this tool be used to update a large number of sql connections in an org? My company is changing their primary source data to a new sql database and we have ~100 reports that will need new connections. Is there a more programmatic way you would recommend rather than manually updating each pbix file? thank you Sir 🙏
Hi Zach,
What I would do is to download the files into a single folder holding all of the files.
This will download it in the TMDL format.
Then open all the files in Visual Studio code.
You can then do a find and replace across all the files, where you can bulk replace the connection string across all of the sources.
thank you Gilbert
tried to do this today and got the following message
“Error running command FabricStudio.PowerBI.downloadPBIP:
Cannot read properties of undefined (reading ‘slice’). This is likely caused by the extension that contributes FabricStudio.PowerBI.downloadPBIP.”