How to Save Power BI as PDF

Saving your Power BI report as a PDF is a great way to share insights, create snapshots for presentations, or archive your work. This article shows you how to export your reports easily, covering everything from the standard method in Power BI Service to a handy workaround in Power BI Desktop and even how to automate the process.

Why Should You Export a Power BI Report to PDF?

Before jumping into the how-to, let's quickly touch on why creating a PDF from your Power BI report is so useful. A PDF creates a static, universally accessible version of your dynamic report.

• Sharing with Non-Power BI Users: Many stakeholders, clients, or executives may not have a Power BI account or know how to navigate the service. Sending a PDF is the simplest way to get the key information in front of them.

• Creating Point-in-Time Archives: For monthly or quarterly reviews, you often need a snapshot of performance on a specific date. A PDF serves as a perfect, unchangeable record for your archives.

• Printing and Presentations: If you need a physical copy or want to embed a specific view into a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation, a PDF is the ideal format.

• Ensuring Consistent Formatting: A PDF ensures everyone sees the exact same layout, charts, and data, without worrying about browser differences or screen resolutions.

Method 1: Exporting from Power BI Service (The Official Way)

The most common and feature-rich method for creating a PDF is directly from the Power BI Service, Microsoft's cloud-based platform. This method allows you to export all or specific pages of your published report.

What You'll Need

To use this feature, you must have:

• A Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) license.

• Access permissions to the report within a workspace in the Power BI Service.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Follow these steps to generate your PDF:

1. Log in to your Power BI account at app.powerbi.com and navigate to the report you wish to export.

2. Open the report. At the top of the screen, you'll see a menu bar. Click on Export and then select PDF from the dropdown list.

3. A dialog box will pop up with several export options. This is where you can customize your PDF output.

4. Understand Your Export Options:

   • Export with: This is a crucial choice.

     • Current values: This option captures the report in its current state, including any filters, slicers, or drill-downs you have applied. It's perfect for exporting a specific slice of your data story.

     • Default values: This option will ignore all your active changes and export the report just as it looked when it was originally published. Use this if you want a clean, standard version.

   • Only export current page: Check this box if you just need the single page you are currently viewing. Leave it unchecked to export all visible pages of the report.

   • Exclude hidden report tabs: New reports may sometimes have pages that are hidden from the main view but are still there "under the hood" (often used for tooltips or drill-throughs). Check this box to keep them out of your PDF.

5. Once you've made your selections, click the blue Export button.

6. The export process will begin in the background. You don’t have to stay on the page. Power BI will show a small pop-up notification in the top right corner when your PDF is ready. Click the notification to download your file.

Things to Keep in Mind

• Page Limits: Power BI has a limit of 50 pages for a single PDF export. If your report is longer, you’ll need to export it in sections.

• Custom Visuals: Not all visual elements are created equal. Only certified Power BI visuals are guaranteed to render correctly in the PDF. Uncertified custom visuals or specific R visuals might not be included or could look distorted.

• Backgrounds & Wallpapers: If your report has a complex background image or wallpaper, it might get cropped during the export. Always double-check your output.

• Non-Exportable Elements: Interactive features like tooltips, drill-down states, filter panes, and personal bookmarks will not appear in the static PDF.

Method 2: Using "Print to PDF" from Power BI Desktop

What if you want a quick PDF of a report you're still building and haven’t published yet? Or if you only need one or two pages? The "Print to PDF" function in Power BI Desktop is a simple but effective workaround.

When to Use This Method

This approach is best for:

• Fast, one-page exports during the design phase.

• Creating drafts for quick feedback.

• Situations where you don't have publishing access to the Power BI Service.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Open your .pbix file in Power BI Desktop.

2. Navigate to the specific page you want to convert to a PDF.

3. Go to the main menu and click on File > Print.

4. In the print settings window that appears, find the Printer dropdown menu.

5. Select Microsoft Print to PDF (Windows) or a similar PDF writer (like Save as PDF on Mac, or Adobe PDF if you have it installed).

6. Here, you can also adjust basic settings like Page Orientation (Landscape or Portrait) and Paper Size (A4, Letter, etc.).

7. Click Print. You'll then be prompted to choose a location on your computer to save the resulting PDF file.

Limitations of This Method

While useful, this workaround has its downsides. You can only print one page at a time, making it impractical for large, multi-page reports. The final image quality may also be slightly lower than the dedicated export feature from the Power BI Service.

Method 3: Automating PDF Exports with Power Automate

For many teams, creating and distributing a weekly or monthly report is a recurring manual task. If you want to put this on autopilot, you can use Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) to automatically generate and send reports.

What You'll Need

• A Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license, OR the report must be in a workspace with a Premium capacity.

• A Power Automate license (many Microsoft 365 business plans include this).

Example Flow: Emailing a Weekly Report

Setting up a full automation can be complex, but here is a high-level overview of how you could build a flow that automatically emails a PDF of your sales report every Monday morning.

1. Go to Power Automate and create a new Scheduled cloud flow. Set it to run every Monday at 8:00 AM.

2. Add a new step and search for the Power BI connector. Select the action called Export To File for Power BI Reports.

3. Configure this action by selecting the appropriate Workspace and Report from your Power BI account. Set the Export Format to "PDF". You can even specify exact page names or apply a bookmark to get the exact view you need.

4. Add another step. This time, search for the Outlook connector and choose the action Send an email (V2).

5. In the email action, specify the recipients (your leadership team, for example) and write a subject and body for the email.

6. In the Attachments section, you will be able to select the File Content output from the previous Power BI export step. Give the attachment a name, like Weekly_Sales_Report.pdf.

7. Save and turn on your flow. Now, every Monday morning, a freshly generated PDF report will land in your team's inboxes without you lifting a finger.

Fixing Common PDF Export Problems

Sometimes things don't go according to plan. Here are some solutions to common frustrations you might encounter when exporting to PDF.

Problem: My export fails or takes forever to finish.

Cause: This usually happens with very large reports that have many visuals, lots of pages, and are processing huge amounts of data.

Solution: Try applying filters before you export to reduce the amount of data being rendered. If the report has many pages, try exporting just a few at a time or breaking it into smaller reports.

Problem: The formatting is all wrong - charts are cut off or scaled weirdly.

Cause: Power BI pages are, by default, designed for a 16:9 screen ratio, not for standard paper like A4 or Letter size.

Solution: You can fix this in Power BI Desktop before publishing. Go to the Format your report page pane, expand the Page size section, and change the Type from the default 16:9 to a print-friendly format like "Letter" or "A4." This will help your report pages better align with standard document dimensions.

Problem: The "Export to PDF" option is greyed out.

Cause: Your Power BI administrator has likely disabled this feature for your organization in the tenant settings. This is sometimes done for data governance or security reasons.

Solution: You'll need to contact your IT department or Power BI admin. Point them to the Tenant settings > Export and sharing settings > Export reports as PowerPoint presentations or PDF documents toggle, which they'll need to enable.

Final Thoughts

That covers the main ways to save your Power BI report as a PDF. You can use the direct export feature in the Power BI Service for most situations, the simple Print to PDF trick in the Desktop for quick drafts, or Power Automate if you need to ditch manual reporting and put everything on a schedule. The right method simply depends on what you need at the moment.

While exporting to static formats like PDF is essential, we built Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require complex tools just to create a shareable report. We eliminate the hours of building and maintaining reports in tools like Power BI. By connecting directly to sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Salesforce, we let you create live, interactive dashboards just by asking questions in plain English. This way, your team gets real-time data automatically, avoiding the friction of constantly exporting, attaching, and emailing stale reports.