meburgos's avatar
meburgos
New Member
3 years ago
Status:
Needs Info

Reporting issues on the Power Bi Desktop

How do you submit an error happening to a visual on the desktop app? I also googled online, and looks like only the community is a resource to submit any issues. 
Custom Visuals
IsmaelEstrada's avatar
IsmaelEstrada
New Member
8 days ago

Written for: the Microsoft Fabric Community Issues board, read by Power BI Desktop users and Microsoft staff.

Title: PBIR: deleting a page leaves its bookmarks broken, and they are partially rewritten on the first save after adding a page

Summary In a PBIP project using PBIR, deleting a report page in Power BI Desktop does not update or remove the report-level bookmarks that were created on it. The bookmarks stay in bookmarks.json, still show in the Bookmarks pane, and do nothing when clicked. On the first save after adding a new empty page, Desktop rewrites those bookmark files and empties their visual state. The page references inside them stay in place.

Environment

  • Power BI Desktop 2.158.1304.0 64-bit (September 2026)
  • Project format: PBIP with PBIR (definition/ folder), tracked in git
  • 2 report-level bookmarks created while the page that was later deleted was active

Steps to reproduce

  1. Open a PBIP/PBIR project with a page that has a table and a slicer. Create two report-level bookmarks on that page.
  2. Delete that page in Desktop, save, and close Desktop. Commit.
    • Page folder and its page ID in pages.json are removed.
    • The bookmark files are not modified. They still contain activeSection set to the deleted page ID and full per-visual state, including filters.
  3. Reopen the project, add a new empty page, save, and close Desktop.
  4. Run git diff --numstat on the bookmarks/ folder.
    • Both bookmark files are modified, with 112 and 165 lines removed.
  5. Reopen Desktop, open View > Bookmarks, and click each of the two bookmarks.
    • They are listed ("Marcador 13" and "Marcador 14") but clicking either does nothing. There is no page change, no visual change and no error.

What changes in step 4

  • In each bookmark, sections.<deleted page ID>.visualContainers goes from populated containers to {}. The removed state included filters on fields from the model, such as Tabla_medidas[Total ventas], Dim_Geo[Region] and Dim_Calendario[Año].
  • activeSection is unchanged and still points to the deleted page.
  • In one bookmark, options.targetVisualNames still lists the ID of a visual that was on the deleted page.
  • Both bookmarks are still registered in bookmarks/bookmarks.json.

Reproducibility Reproduced twice with identical results. The second run was controlled: Desktop was closed after every save and before every git operation, so the changes can't come from a stale in-memory session. In both runs the deletion left the bookmark files unchanged, and the rewrite appeared on the add-page save. I have not tested whether other kinds of saves trigger it.

Expected behavior Any of these would be reasonable:

  • Deleting a page removes or updates the bookmarks tied to it.
  • Desktop warns that bookmarks reference the page being deleted and lets the author choose.
  • Any cleanup happens when the page is deleted, not as a side effect of a later save.

Actual behavior

  • The bookmarks remain, with dangling references to a deleted page and visual, and silently stop working.
  • A later save partially cleans them (visual state removed, page references kept).

Impact

  • Orphaned bookmarks stay visible in the Bookmarks pane, and clicking them does nothing and gives no error. Report-level bookmarks are part of the published report, so viewers see them too, and any button linked to one would silently do nothing. The author can't tell from the UI that they are broken.
  • If the author wants them gone, deleting the page doesn't remove them, and nothing indicates which ones are orphaned.
  • If the author wants to keep them, there is no prompt to move them, and their saved state is cleared without notice.
  • In source control, diffs contain large changes unrelated to the edit being saved, which makes review harder and works against PBIR's goal of clean, trackable diffs.

Questions

  1. Is it intended that bookmarks aren't updated when their page is deleted?
  2. Is the partial cleanup on the next save intended? If so, should activeSection and targetVisualNames also be cleared?
  3. Should the Bookmarks pane flag bookmarks whose page no longer exists?
  4. Should deleting a page that has bookmarks delete them, ask the author what to do, or at least list the affected bookmarks?

Completed Ideas