Forum Discussion
PDF (Binary) Files in a table
I foolishly attempted to create a table in PBI Desktop, from a table in SQL Server, with one column a binary (pdf). I hopefully thought it would provide a link that you could download right out of the report, but that didn't work. In fact it doesn't appear something like this is possible at all. I found this in the documentation:
It seems to me the best option would be to provide a link to a SharePoint site or Azure storage or something, which would be a workaround. Anyone ever tried this?
5 Replies
There is another option, to provide the PDF in Base64 encoding, and then to use a visual that can Base64 decode. The problem here is that strings (including Base64 strings) can only be 32K characters long, so you would have to chop the PDF in chunks of no more than 32K bytes and then reassemble them in DAX.
lbendlin , thanks for the suggestion. That's more of a goat-rope than I'm interested in, but thanks for the idea, and for confirming the limitation. Clearly, PBI is not the appropriate tool for this problem.
Hi, joglidden2
Excuse me, was lbendlin's answer helpful?
If it's helpful, you may consider marking his answer as a solution, so that community members in the community who have similar questions to you can find the answer more quickly.Thank you in advance for your contribution to the community.
Best Regards,
Leroy Lu
There isn't a solution. It's just a shortcoming of PBI, or PBI is simply the wrong tool.
