topic Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF in Report Server

Power BI RS and export table to PDF

Mary_aj — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 08:15:35 GMT

Hi All,

I use Power BI Report Server May 2020

Maybe, Do you have any ideas or solutions on how to export a table to PDF format?

Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF

whereismydata — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 08:34:38 GMT

As far as I know this is not supported by PowerBI RS but supported by PowerBI Service.

What you can do:

There is a general print option; create a page with this table only, maybe also hide elements that you do not want to be printed. Then create a print button that links to this page. This way you only see this one table on the print
Another solution would be to use the report builder since it allwos exporting to other formats as well like XLSX, PPT, PDF...
A more complex solution would involve power automate or maybe some sort of custom scripting that listens to a http request and then pulls the data from a given database and safes the table. But I don't think this is the most userfriendly and developer friendly option

Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF

m_aj — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 10:56:07 GMT

Thanks for your ideas 😃

But If using a print option and the table has scrolled, it is work as a picture.

Maybe, report builder is a better solution for this, but I hoped to find another way.

Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF

whereismydata — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 11:08:35 GMT

yeah I know, this is not the best solution, but PBIRS is very limited in that way.

Another way to get a PDF export would be to export the data as XLSX and then let the user safe as PDF. But again, not very userfriendly.

Just checked, PDF exported by Report Builder is a 'real' PDF not just picture safed as PDF.

Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF

m_aj — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 13:23:28 GMT

whereismydata Maybe you also know

if I have a table with 8 columns and export it to PDF using Report Builder, Report Builder can change the size of this table automatically?

Because I got pdf file but 4 columns on the first page, the next 4 columns are on the second page.

Thanks)

Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF

whereismydata — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 13:36:12 GMT

hm, report builder is pretty static. I'm not shure if you can do anything dynamically.

But since you have a table with a fixed number of columns I think you can design the report so that all information is on one page? maybe it help to play around with pagesize or orientation.

Re: Power BI RS and export table to PDF

whereismydata — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 14:25:44 GMT

RADACAD just posted about Paginated Reports:

https://radacad.com/power-bi-paginated-report-perfect-for-printing