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How to Publish Power BI Desktop Report to Web

Cody Schneider•

Transforming complex data into a clear, interactive Power BI report is a huge win. But to truly maximize its impact, you need to get that report out of the Desktop app and in front of the people who need to see it. This guide will walk you through the process of publishing your Power BI report to a public webpage, making it accessible to anyone with a link.

Before You Begin: Key Requirements and Considerations

Before you start, there are a few important things to get in order. Ticking these boxes first will ensure a smooth process and help you avoid any unwelcome surprises.

1. You Need a Power BI Pro or Per User License

The "Publish to web" feature is not available on the free Power BI license. To generate a public embed code, your Power BI account must have a Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license. Your organization's IT or Power BI administrator manages these licenses, so if you're unsure what you have, it's best to check with them first.

2. Your Report Must Be Ready and Saved

Make sure the report you want to publish is finalized and saved as a Power BI Desktop file (with a .pbix extension). This is the file you'll be uploading to the Power BI Service, which is the online, cloud-based home for your reports.

3. A Critical Warning About Data Privacy

This is the most important consideration of all. When you use the "Publish to web (public)" feature, you are creating a report that is accessible to anyone on the internet.

  • Viewers do not need a Power BI license or to sign in to see your report.

  • Search engines like Google can crawl and index your report, making its content discoverable in search results.

  • Anyone who has the link can share it.

Never, ever use this feature for reports containing sensitive, confidential, or proprietary information. It is designed for sharing public data, such as a report on city demographics, publicly available marketing statistics, or a portfolio project using non-sensitive datasets. For secure sharing with specific colleagues or clients, you must use Power BI's other sharing options that require authentication.

Step-by-Step: Publishing Your Report to the Web

With those prerequisites out of the way, you’re ready to get started. The process involves moving your report from the Desktop application to the online Power BI Service, and then generating a special embed code.

Step 1: Open Your Report in Power BI Desktop

Launch the Power BI Desktop application and open the final version of the .pbix report file that you want to publish.

Step 2: Sign In to Your Power BI Account

Look to the top-right corner of the Power BI Desktop window. If you're not already signed in, you’ll see a "Sign in" button. Click it and enter the credentials for your Power BI Pro or PPU account. If you're already signed in and see your name, you're good to go.

Step 3: Publish the Report to Power BI Service

On the "Home" ribbon at the top of the window, you'll find a yellow-orange Publish button. Click it.

A dialog box will appear, asking you to select a destination workspace. A "Workspace" in Power BI is like a folder for organizing your reports, dashboards, and datasets. You will have at least one option called "My workspace." Select the workspace where you want to publish your report and click the "Select" button.

Power BI will now upload your report and its data model to the Power BI Service. Once it's complete, you'll see a success message with a link to open the report online. You can click this link to go straight to the next step.

Step 4: Locate the Report in Power BI Service

If you didn't click the link in the success message, open your web browser and navigate to https://app.powerbi.com. Sign in if prompted. In the navigation pane on the left, find the workspace where you just published your report and click on it. You should see your report listed under the "Reports" tab. Click its name to open it.

Step 5: Generate the Public Embed Code

With your report open in the Power BI Service, this is where the magic happens.

In the menu bar at the top, navigate to File → Embed report → Publish to web (public).

Step 6: Review the Confirmation and Acknowledge the Warning

A new dialog box will appear, rightfully warning you again about making your report public. Microsoft wants to be absolutely sure you understand the implications. Read the warning carefully. If you are confident that your data is safe to share publicly, click "Create embed code." Another pop-up will appear for final confirmation. Click "Publish".

Step 7: Copy Your Link or iframe Code

Success! The final pop-up provides you with what you need. You have two options:

  • A direct link: This is a simple URL that you can send to anyone. When they click it, they'll see the report in a full-browser view.

  • An HTML iframe code: This is what you'll use to embed the report directly into a webpage, blog post, or SharePoint page so it appears as part of your content.

Copy the one you need. The iframe code is typically the more common choice for seamless integration.

Embedding Your Report on a Website or Blog

Now that you have your code, you can display your interactive report. If you’re using the iframe code snippet, simply paste it into the HTML of your webpage where you want the report to appear. If you use a content management system like WordPress, you'll need to switch from the visual editor to the text/HTML/code editor to paste the snippet.

The code will look something like this:

Adjusting the Report Size

You can easily adjust the size of the embedded report by changing the width and height values right in the code. For example, to make it wider, you could change width="800" to width="1140". To make it responsive and automatically adapt to the width of the container on your site, you can change the width value to width="100%".

Managing and Updating Your Published Reports

Your work isn't done once the report is published. You need to know how to maintain it.

How Updates Work

What happens when your data changes or you want to improve your report? The process is simple and you don't need to get a new embed code.

  1. Make your changes in the Power BI Desktop file.

  2. Click the Publish button again in Power BI Desktop and select the same workspace.

  3. Power BI will ask if you want to replace the existing version of the dataset and report. Confirm that you do.

That's it! Your embedded report on the web will automatically update to show the latest version. There might be a short delay due to caching, but visitors will soon see the refreshed report without you having to edit your website again.

Deleting an Embed Code

If you ever need to revoke access and take your public report offline, go to the Power BI Service and click the Settings gear icon in the top-right corner, then select "Manage embed codes.” Here you will see a list of all the reports you have published to the web. Find the one you want to remove, click the ellipses (...) next to it, and select "Delete." The public link will immediately stop working.

Best Practices for Public Reports

Finally, keep these tips in mind to create a better experience for your audience and protect your data.

  • Keep It Simple: Public viewers lack the context that internal teams have. Avoid overly complex visuals and focus on telling a clear story with your data. Use titles, text boxes, and annotations to guide people through the report.

  • Optimize for Performance: Web viewers are impatient. Large, complex data models can make your embedded report load slowly. Before publishing, do your best to optimize your data model, limit the number of visuals on a single page, and remove any unnecessary columns.

  • Test the Display: Check how your embedded report looks on a few different browsers and, most importantly, on mobile devices to ensure the experience is good for all users.

  • Re-Check for Sensitive IDs: It's worth saying one last time. Double-check your data for anything that could be considered sensitive, such as email addresses, customer names, or specific employee IDs before publishing. It's easy to overlook a column when you're focused on building visuals.

Final Thoughts

Publishing a Power BI report to the web is a fantastic way to share your data insights with a broad audience. By following the process from Desktop to Service and carefully considering data privacy, you can transform your local report file into an interactive and accessible web asset that highlights your analytical work.

For marketing and sales teams, getting clear reports from tools like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Salesforce can often feel just as complex as learning Power BI. Instead of spending hours pulling data and wrangling spreadsheets, we created Graphed to do the heavy lifting for you. You can connect all your sources in just a few clicks and use simple, conversational language - not code - to instantly build the real-time dashboards and reports you need to see what’s working and what’s not.