How to Publish to Web in Power BI

You’ve wrangled the data and built a beautiful, insightful report in Power BI. Now, you need to share it outside of your organization - on a blog post, a public website, or in a portfolio. Microsoft Power BI’s "Publish to web" feature is your key, and this guide will walk you through exactly how to use it, step-by-step.

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We'll cover how to generate a public link and embed code for your reports, including the vital security considerations you need to be aware of first. We will also cover how to manage or remove a report after you’ve shared it.

First Things First: What Does "Publish to Web" Actually Do?

In simple terms, the Publish to web feature generates a special link and an HTML code snippet (called an iframe) that allows anyone to view your interactive Power BI report in a web browser. Unlike other sharing methods in Power BI that require viewers to have an account and specific permissions, publishing to the web makes your report completely public.

This is perfect for situations like:

• Embedding a market trends dashboard in a blog post for your company.
• Showcasing a data visualization project in your professional portfolio.
• Sharing survey results or public data research on a news or community website.
• Giving a wide audience access to a report without managing individual user permissions.

Viewers can interact with the report - filtering data, clicking on charts, and exploring the insights you've prepared - just as they would within the Power BI service, but without needing to sign in.

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Critical Security Warning: This Makes Your Data Public!

Before you click a single button, you must understand the most important aspect of this feature: When you publish a report to the web, the data in that report becomes public. Anyone on the internet with the link can view it, and search engines could potentially index it. There is no password protection and no login required.

This means you should NEVER use "Publish to web" for any report containing sensitive or confidential information. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Personally Identifiable Information (PII): Customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, or physical addresses.
• Internal Financial Data: Company revenue, profit margins, operational costs, or detailed sales figures.
• Proprietary Information: Business strategies, trade secrets, or any other data that should not be exposed externally.
• Protected Health Information (PHI): Any medical or patient information.

Always double-check your data model and your report visuals to confirm you are not accidentally exposing anything sensitive. If you need to share a report with specific people securely, use Power BI's standard sharing features that require authentication. Treat any report published to the web as if it were posted on the front page of a newspaper.

How to Enable "Publish to Web" (For Power BI Admins)

In many organizations, the ability to "Publish to web" is disabled by default for security reasons. If you try to publish and don't see the option, it's likely something your Power BI administrator needs to enable. If you are the admin, here's how to do it. If not, you can forward these instructions to your IT department.

Only a Power BI admin can change this setting in the Admin Portal.

1. Sign into the Power BI service.
2. Click the Settings gear icon in the top right corner and select Admin portal.
3. In the Admin portal, navigate to Tenant settings.
4. Scroll down to the "Export and sharing settings" section and find the Publish to web setting.
5. Expand the setting. You'll have a few choices for how to enable it:

• Enabled for the entire organization: This is the simplest option but grants publishing rights to everyone.
• Enabled for specific security groups: This is the most common and recommended approach. You can create a security group (e.g., "Power BI Publishers") in Microsoft 365 and only members of that group will have the ability to publish reports publicly.
• You can also specify security groups to exclude from publishing.

Once you’ve made your choice, click Apply. It may take a few minutes for the change to take effect across your organization.

Step-by-Step: How to Generate Your Embed Code

Once the feature is enabled for your account, creating a public link is straightforward. Remember, these steps take place in the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com), not Power BI Desktop.

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Step 1: Open Your Report

Navigate to the workspace containing the report you want to publish and open it.

Step 2: Find the "Publish to Web" Option

At the top of the report, click on File, then select Embed report, and finally click on Publish to web (public).

Step 3: Confirm and Create the Code

A confirmation window will appear, reiterating the security warning we discussed earlier. Read it carefully. If you are certain your data is safe to share publicly, click Create embed code.

Step 4: Copy Your Link or Embed Code

A final window will pop up with two options. This is what you've been looking for!

• A direct link: This is a simple URL that you can email, post on social media, or share anywhere you can paste a link. Anyone who clicks it will open a full-page, interactive version of your report.
• HTML embed code (iframe): This is the code you will copy and paste into your website's HTML editor to embed the report directly on a page or in a blog post.

You can also adjust the default view (which report page opens first) and the size of the embedded report from this dialog. Most of the time, the default size works well, or you can use your website's tools to adjust it later.

Copy the code you need, and you're ready for the next step.

How to Embed Your Report on a Website

Pasting your iframe code into a website is fairly simple. The exact steps depend on your platform (WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, etc.), but the general concept is the same: you need to find a way to add a block of custom HTML.

Example: Embedding in a WordPress Post

Let's use WordPress with its modern block editor as an example.

1. Create a new post or page, or edit an existing one.
2. Click the plus (+) icon to add a new block where you want your report to appear.
3. Search for the "Custom HTML" block and select it.
4. In the block that appears, paste the full <iframe>...</iframe> code that you copied from Power BI.
5. You can click the "Preview" button in the block's toolbar to see how it will look.
6. Save, preview, or publish your post. Your interactive Power BI report is now live on your site!

The process is very similar for other content management systems. Just look for an "Embed," "HTML," or "Code" block to paste your iframe into.

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Need to Make a Change? Managing and Deleting Embed Codes

What if you find a mistake in your data, need to update the report, or want to remove a published report entirely? The good news is that any changes you make to the original report in the Power BI Service are automatically reflected in the embedded version (there can be a short caching delay).

But what if you need to take it offline completely? You can manage all of your public codes in one place.

1. In the Power BI Service, click the Settings gear icon.
2. Select Manage embed codes.
3. Here, you'll see a list of all the reports you've published to the web for that workspace.
4. From this screen, you can click the ellipsis (...) next to any code to get the code again or, more importantly, to Delete it.

Deleting an embed code permanently breaks the link. Anyone trying to visit the URL or view the embedded report on a website will see an error message indicating the content is no longer available. This is the correct way to "un-publish" your data from the web.

Final Thoughts

Publishing your Power BI report to the web is a fantastic way to share your data stories with a wide audience. As long as you remain mindful of the public nature of the data, the process of generating and embedding the code is simple and allows you to bring your interactive dashboards directly to your readers.

While Power BI is a powerful tool, getting to that final, shareable report often involves a steep learning curve and considerable time spent on manual setup. At Graphed, we believe getting insights shouldn't be so complex. We built an AI data analyst that allows you to connect all your marketing and sales data sources in seconds and create real-time charts and dashboards just by describing what you need in plain English. Instead of a multi-step publishing process, you can build what you need instantly and share live insights effortlessly with Graphed.