Advanced Data Interactions in the Power BI Service

After reports have been published to the Power BI Service, there are various ways you can interact with visuals and the underlying data model: from sharing visuals in a PowerPoint slide to pinning select visuals from multiple pages and files to a single dashboard.

Export Visual to PowerPoint

Stop creating static screenshots for your PowerPoint presentation. There’s a better way.

If you don’t already have the Power BI Add-In for PowerPoint, do the following:
While in PowerPoint, go to the Insert tab, select Get Add-ins, search for “Microsoft Power BI” in the store, and click Add to install.

Now, back in the Power BI Service, hover over the visual you want included in your presentation, click the ellipses, go to Share, then click “Open in PowerPoint.”

After you click “Open in PowerPoint,” you’ll see the following window pop up.

If you don’t have a PowerPoint file open, and you want to start from a brand-new file, click “Open in PowerPoint.” Otherwise, copy the URL code. If you use the URL code, go to the Insert tab in PowerPoint and click on the Power BI add-in. You’ll be prompted to paste the URL code in the box. Click “Insert.”

Once your visual has been added to PowerPoint, you’ll see that it says “Live data” at the bottom of the visual.

This means the visual can be interacted with (e.g., hover over data bars to reveal tooltips). You can also refresh the visuals by clicking the column chart icon at the bottom-right of the visual and then clicking “Refresh.”

This means you don’t have to update your PowerPoint presentation with new screenshots of updated visuals. Simply refresh!

What if you don’t want a live visual? What if you want it to be static? Simply click where it says, “Live data”, and you’ll see an option to select “Snapshot.” Your visual will now display “Snapshot” instead of “Live data,” meaning the visual is static, cannot be interacted with, and cannot be refreshed.

Export Entire Page(s) to PowerPoint or PDF

Similar to sharing a visual in the Power BI Service to PowerPoint, you can share/export an entire page to PowerPoint or PDF. Once you’re on a report page, you should see File, Export, Share, etc., across the top. Click Export, then PowerPoint or PDF.

If you export to PDF, you’ll see options to export current values (selected by default) or export default values. The current values may be different from the default (as published) values if you’ve applied a filter or sliced your data in some way.

You will also see the options to exclude hidden report tabs (checked by default) and to only export current page (unchecked by default). If you leave the latter unchecked, then all the pages in the published file, not just the one you’re on, will be exported to PDF.

Reports that can’t be exported:
• Power BI reports with more than 50 report pages currently can’t be exported. Paginated reports don’t have this limitation. See Print a paginated report for details.
• Reports larger than 250 MB.
• Reports that are owned by a user outside your Power BI tenant domain, such as a report owned by someone outside your organization and shared with you, can’t be published to PDF.

Analyze Data in Excel

Do the published reports not answer all your questions? Is there additional analysis you would like to do without having to ask the developer for additional reports? Use the Analyze in Excel feature. Simply go to Export then click on Analyze in Excel.

This will open an Excel Online file with a pivot with the same data model loaded that the reports are based on. Analyze the data in the pivot table or create a pivot chart.

Explore Data

What if you don’t want to export the data to Excel? What if you want to stay within the Power BI Serve? You can use the Explore feature.

After clicking Explore, the following window will pop up.

Start adding the fields and measures of interest to you. You also have the option to change the visual. You can either save it as a stand-alone visual or save it as a report, both of which get saved to the workspace. If you save as report and then navigate to it, you’ll see that you can add additional visuals to the report page, thereby building your own report.

Pin Visuals to Dashboard

Want key visuals from multiple pages, or even multiple published reports, in a single location for ease of viewing? Use a dashboard. Simply hover over the visual you want pinned to the dashboard and click the thumb tack icon.

A window will pop up asking if you want to pin the visual to an existing dashboard or a new dashboard. If there are no existing dashboards, or if you want to create a new dashboard, click “New dashboard” and give it a name. Otherwise, choose an existing dashboard.

After pinning all the visuals you want, you can move and resize the visuals as needed. Your final dashboard might look something like this.

If you click on a visual, it will take you to the report page from which it was pinned, allowing you to do further analysis.

Conclusion

These are some advanced ways you can extend the presentation and analysis of reports and visuals in the Power BI Service.
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