Forum Discussion
Helper VPubishing report to subfolder
Hi Microsoft,
When I publish a report from PowerBi Desktop to the service, I select a folder to publish in, but the report publishes to the root of the workspace.
I am using April 2025 (don't want to upgrade yet).
Hope the report publishing and subfolder code can be reviewed, seems very buggy.
Kind regards,
Ben.
Hi bhalicki ,
Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.
There is a Limitation related to folders in a workspace
When publishing reports to folders, report names must be unique throughout an entire workspace, regardless of their location. Therefore, when publishing a report to a workspace that has another report with the same name in a different folder, the report will publish to the location of the already existing report. If you want to move the report to a new folder location in the workspace, you need to make this change in the Power BI service.
Please check it out and other limitations here: Create folders in workspaces - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Hence, ensure all the report names are unique.I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.
Thank you
8 Replies
bhalickiHi jaineshp ,
Where did you source this information?
From my experience, publishing to subfolders has worked in the past, albeit with issues (sometimes it will create duplicate reports in the same folder, even though the reports have the same name). I have never come across the issue where a I select a folder and the report is published to the root of the workspace instead, so this appears to be a new issue.
Kind regards,
Ben.
- tharunkumarRTK
Super User
I have encountered a similar issue that you have described that is, when I published a report to a sub folder it created two report objects though the report name is same. Later I realized that thought the reports are same, they are pointd to two different semantic models and those semantic models are in different workspace. So Power BI considered it as a new report.
In that senario we should be cautious that if we are re-publihsing a report to workspace when old version of same report exists in the workspace then power bi will give a nudge saying do you want to replace or not. If you did not get that nudge then you are creating a new report object.
I would suggest you to make sure your report is pointed to same semantic model and try to udpate your power bi desktop application. Make sure the report name is also exactly same. I believe it will solve your issues
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- bhalicki
Hi tharunkumarRTK ,
Thank you for your reply, very much appreciated. Yes, I had a long discussion with Microsoft support engineers about the duplication and they arrived at the same conclusion. Although I can see why it has been designed this way, I don't really agree with it's implementation. I often have two or three copies of the same semantic model (production, test, development etc) and connect a work-in-progress report to various models depending on where it is up to in the development cycle. If I then go to publish in production but forget to change the model, it creates a duplicate... then becomes a challenge to find out which report is the live version and which is the new copy. The other thing is, often users may only have access to one specific workspace, so if a report is connected to a semantic model in another workspace, the user may not have access to the underlying data model. Personally I think workspaces and folders should be treated the same as they are in Explorers - containers for files - where duplication isn't allowed. Just my two cents worth...
But anyway, for some reason when I publish a report, and select a specific folder, it still publishes in the root of the workspace, which I then have to move later.
Kind regards,
Ben.
- jaineshp
Memorable Member
Hey bhalicki,
Thank you for the follow-up question about sources.
I should clarify - my response was based on similar community's post I have encountered before, not official Microsoft documentation.
I may have been too definitive in describing this as a "known limitation" without proper sourcing.
Your experience with successful subfolder publishing (with occasional duplicates) is valuable context that I didn't account for. The root publishing issue you're experiencing does sound different from typical subfolder publishing challenges.To better assist you:
1. Can you share which specific version of Power BI Desktop you're using?
2. Is this happening with all reports or specific ones?
3. Are you seeing any error messages during the publishing process?
This will help identify if it's a version-specific bug, workspace configuration issue, or something else entirely.
Thanks for keeping me accountable on the sourcing - it helps ensure we provide accurate information to the community.
Best regards,
Jainesh Poojara / Power BI Developer
Hi bhalicki ,
I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.
Thank you.Hi bhalicki ,
Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.
There is a Limitation related to folders in a workspace
When publishing reports to folders, report names must be unique throughout an entire workspace, regardless of their location. Therefore, when publishing a report to a workspace that has another report with the same name in a different folder, the report will publish to the location of the already existing report. If you want to move the report to a new folder location in the workspace, you need to make this change in the Power BI service.
Please check it out and other limitations here: Create folders in workspaces - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Hence, ensure all the report names are unique.I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.
Thank youHi bhalicki
May I check if this issue has been resolved? If not, Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.
Thank youHi bhalicki
As we haven’t heard back from you, we wanted to kindly follow up to check if the suggestions provided by the community members for the issue worked. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.
Thanks and regards
