Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
6 years ago

Change data source for a Power BI report builder report

I'm building a bunch of similar reports in report builder coming from different data sources, but with the same basic format and many of the same columns. Once I have one finished I want to copy it, and then point the new copy to a different data source, so that I have all my formatting done and most columns are set, then I just need to add or delete any columns which are different in the new report. But I can't seem to find a way to change the underlying source - how is that done?

Need Help
Tips and Tricks

6 Replies

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      6 years ago

      Anonymous  Thank you for the reply. I'm currently working on embedding and datasource sharing, but that doesn't address my issue, which is how to change the data source of an existing report. For example, I have a report with a data source named "datasource" which points to a sql server view. I now have a new report requirement which looks virtually identical to my first report and has almost all the same columns. So I want to preserve all the formatting work I've done by copying my first report and then changing the data source for the new one to "datasource2". That way I can simply delete any fields I don't need and add any new ones from the new source, but I can re-use all my existing work.

       

      Is that not possible yet? It seems like a pretty basic requirement but I can't find any documentation which discusses it.

       

      thanks!

      Alex

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      6 years ago

      Anonymous  I even tried adding my new datasource to the new report, deleting the old one, and than using the exact same name for the new one. Even that doesn't work, it kicks out an error. It seems like there has to be a way to make this work.

  • clattanzio's avatar
    clattanzio
    Regular Visitor
    2 years ago

    I might be late to the game, but it does seem possible now.

     

    Under the Datasets folder if you click on the Main dataset an Edit button will show up under Report Data and you can use power query to edit the datasets.