Can't open more than one .rdl report in Power BI Report Builder

[aak]

I am sometimes having an issue where I am unable to open more than one .rdl file at a time. I have a lot of report builder reports that I need to work on. Generally, I work on two at a time. Sometimes both open just fine. Other times one or both won't open. I just get a black box when I hover over the report builder icon in the task bar. Clicking the black box won't do anything, but I can close it from the task bar. I can't find any rhyme or reason to it. Nor can I figure out a way around it. Help would be appreciated.

[filip_ai]

This might help someone (including me, if I forget in the future): I ran in to this same issue today, and tried the option to open Report Builder first and then open the second report from within the app. It didn't work, and I got the same black box in the taskbar as described by aak. Then I tried to open the Report Builder (and the second report) on the display that was set to Main display (I have two external monitors) - and voila, it worked. So, perhaps this is a display issue. Would be interesting if someone else could verify this.

[KBO]

Hi @aak , may be your machine need more CPU? Sounds like a classic loading problem but correct me if I am wrong :). 

Best,

Kathrin

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[aak]

Hi @KBO ,

I seem to have plenty of CPU. Curiously, I found that if I open Report Builder first, then open the file, it works. The issue seems to arise mostly when I just try to open the .rdl file directly.

[filip_ai]

Thank you for this discovery - it helped me. I have had the same issue for at least a year now (with several version of Report Builder - apparently newer than the one you were using back in 2020). This seems to be a bug in Report Builder that still exists. The version I am currently using is v15.7.1806.11.

[KBO · Accepted solution]

Hi @aak ,

which version do you use to open the files? May be an update to the newest version would help 🙂

Best,

Kathrin

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[aak]

Hi @KBO ,

My report builder was indeed ever so slightly out of date. I went ahead and updated it and I think it works. At least I haven't run into that problem so far. Thank you!

[mwegener]

Hi @KBO, 

do you have an idea why?