How to Get Power BI Report Link

Trying to share your Power BI report but can't figure out how to grab the right link? It’s a common hurdle, especially since Power BI offers several different ways to share your work, each with its own purpose and security level. This guide will walk you through the various methods for getting a report link, from sending it securely to a teammate to publishing it publicly on the web.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

Understanding Your Power BI Sharing Options

Before you copy a link, it's essential to understand that sharing in Power BI is fundamentally about granting access, not just sending a file like you would with an Excel sheet. Who you share with and how you share determines whether they can see the report, interact with it, and even edit it. Licensing also plays a big role, for most sharing methods, both you and the person you're sharing with will need a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license.

There are four main ways you'll generate a link to your report:

• Direct Link for Specific Users: The most common method. You share the report directly with specific people or groups, giving them secure access.
• Public Link (Publish to web): This creates a link anyone on the internet can use to view the report. It’s powerful but must be used with extreme caution.
• SharePoint Online Embed Link: A specific link designed to embed your report seamlessly into a SharePoint page for your team.
• Secure Embed Link (Website or portal): This gives you an iframe code to embed the report in an internal website or secure portal, requiring viewers to log in.

We'll cover how to get the link for each of these scenarios step by step.

Method 1: Sharing a Direct Link with Specific People

This is the most secure and frequently used method for sharing reports with colleagues inside your organization. It ensures that only the individuals you name can access the report, and it requires them to log in with their Power BI credentials.

Here’s how to do it:

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Open Your Report in Power BI Service: First, navigate to the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com), go to your workspace, and open the report you want to share.

2. Click the 'Share' Button: At the top of the report view, you'll see a prominent "Share" button. Click it to open the sharing dialog.

3. Choose Who Can Access the Link: You have a few options for determining access permissions.

• Specific people (Default): This is the most secure option. You will enter the names or email addresses of the exact people you want to give access to.
• People in your organization: This creates a link that anyone within your company’s Microsoft 365 tenant can use to view the report. It's less restrictive and useful for general internal reports.
• People with existing access: This option generates a link you can send to people who have already been granted access. It's helpful if you just need to re-send the link.

4. Define What Recipients Can Do: Below the main access settings, you can finely tune permissions:

• Allow recipients to share this report: Check this box if you want the people you share with to be able to share it with others. Uncheck it for tighter control.
• Allow recipients to build content with the data associated with this report: This is a very important setting. It grants viewers "Build" permissions on the underlying dataset. This means they can connect to your data in Power BI Desktop to create their own reports and analyses. Leave this unchecked unless you explicitly want them to have that power.

5. Copy the Link or Send an Email: You have two final choices.

• Send an Email Notification: Type the email addresses into the box, add an optional message, and click "Send". Power BI will email them a link directly.
• Just Copy the Link: If you'd rather share the link yourself via Teams, Slack, or another app, simply click the "Copy link" icon. The settings you configured will be applied to this link. Anyone you send it to will need to be on the access list you defined in a previous step.

This direct sharing method is the bread and butter of Power BI collaboration. It's secure, respects row-level security, and gives you granular control over who sees your data.

Method 2: Creating a Public "Publish to web" Link

Sometimes, you might need to share a report with a wide, public audience - for example, embedding a data visualization in a blog post or sharing non-sensitive data on a public website. The "Publish to web" feature creates a public link for this exact purpose.

Warning: Be extremely careful with this feature. Once a report is published to the web, the data is no longer secure. Anyone on the internet with the link can view your report. Do not use this method for confidential or proprietary information. Check your organization's policy, as many companies disable this feature for security reasons.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Navigate to 'Embed report' in Your Report: With your report open in the Power BI service, go to File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).

2. Acknowledge the Warning: Power BI will show a dialog box reminding you about the security risks. Read it carefully and, if you're comfortable proceeding, click "Create embed code."

3. Publish: You'll see one final confirmation screen. Click "Publish."

4. Copy Your Public Link: Power BI will then provide you with two things:

• A direct link you can share with anyone.
• An HTML iframe code you can use to embed the live, interactive report directly into a webpage.

Viewers do not need a Power BI license to see a report shared this way. To manage or delete your public links, go to Settings (gear icon) > Manage embed codes.

Method 3: Getting an Embed Link for SharePoint Online

If your team uses SharePoint Online, embedding Power BI reports is a fantastic way to centralize information. Power BI has a specific feature that generates a link optimized for SharePoint's Power BI web part.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Go to 'Embed report': Open your report and navigate to File > Embed report > SharePoint Online.

2. Copy the SharePoint Link: A dialog box will appear with an embed URL specifically designed for SharePoint. Copy this link.

3. Use it in SharePoint: Go to your SharePoint page, add the "Power BI" web part, and paste this link into the "Power BI report link" field. The report will appear directly - and interactively - on the page.

This method is secure. Users viewing the SharePoint page still need to have been granted permission to the Power BI report itself (using the direct sharing method described in Method 1). Anyone without permission will see a message prompting them to request access.

Method 4: Using the Secure "Embed" Link

This final method is like a secure version of "Publish to web." It provides an iframe code to embed your report on a website or internal portal, but it requires users to be logged in to their Power BI account to view it. It checks their viewing permissions, just as if they were accessing it directly in the Power BI service.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Choose 'Website or portal': In your report, go to File > Embed report > Website or portal.

2. Copy the Secure iFrame Code: Power BI will generate an HTML iframe code. You can copy this code and embed it into your site's source code.

This option is ideal for embedding reports into internal company portals, secure client-facing applications, or any webpage where you need to showcase data securely to authenticated users. It preserves all your security rules, including row-level security.

Best Practices for Sharing Power BI Reports

Getting the link is one thing, but sharing it correctly is another. Keep these tips in mind as you collaborate.

• Know Your Data and Audience: Always choose your sharing method based on the sensitivity of the data. For confidential information, always use direct sharing (Method 1) or secure embedding (Method 4). "Publish to web" should only be used for genuinely public data.
• Check Your Admin Policies: If you can't find an option like "Publish to web," your Power BI administrator has likely disabled it for the whole organization. This is a common and wise security measure.
• Confirm Licenses: Remember that for most internal sharing, both you and your recipients need Power BI Pro licenses (or the content needs to be in a Premium capacity). If a user reports they can't open a link, this is the first thing to check.
• Use Power BI Apps for Broad Distribution: If you have a collection of dashboards and reports to share with a large internal team, sending ten individual report links is clumsy. Instead, bundle them into a Power BI App. It provides a more professional, organized viewing experience for your users.

Final Thoughts

Sharing your Power BI report is straightforward once you identify the right type of link for your situation. Whether you need a secure, permission-based link for your team or a public URL for a broader audience, the key is to match the sharing method to your audience and the sensitivity of the data you're presenting.

Often, the biggest challenge isn’t sharing the report, but gathering and unifying the data in the first place. Toggling between Google Analytics, Shopify, your CRM, and various ad platforms to manually export data for Power BI is a time-consuming process. We built Graphed to address this by connecting directly to all your marketing and sales tools. You can create centralized, real-time dashboards just by asking in simple language, letting you focus on sharing insights instead of just gathering data.