Power Bi On-Premise - Reports can't be loaded after upgrade to Jan 2019 Power BI report server

[Anonymous]

I have Power Bi on-premise installed on my report server . to do my daily work, i installed the regualr power bi desktop version on  my laptop to create reports etc.

Then I came to know that i cant publish reports with it, because i need Power Bi Desktop (January 2019) .

after installing Power Bi Jan-19 on my laptop and when i lauch my older reports here's what i get.

"Unable to open Document

the queries were authored with a newer version of power bi desktop and might not work with your version. Please install the latest version to avoid errors when refreshing"

How can i fix that?

another question is that i have the on-prem license, but when i start Power Bi on the desktop its asking to sign in. how can i sign in to build dashboards without buying a per-user license .

regards

[cjmc9]

It's been quite some time since you have posted this issue. I leave a reply on how I manage to fix it as this issue is still happening on 2025 versions.
The solution I found is to save the .pbix that has errors, as Power BI Project files. Once you save it, open it using Power BI application with the older version, wait for it to regenerate everything, and then save it. Now you should have an error free Report.

[v-yuta-msft]

@Anonymous ,

This issue should caused by power bi desktop is not the latest version, you can install the latest version and check if this persists.

You can refer to this blog for troubleshooting:

https://sqlserverbi.blog/2018/02/03/managing-multiple-power-bi-desktop-application-versions/

Community Support Team _ Jimmy Tao

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[d_gosbell]

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This issue should caused by power bi desktop is not the latest version, you can install the latest version and check if this persists.

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@v-yuta-msft  This issue is happening because he originally authored the report in question in the latest version of desktop, not in the version that matches his PBIRS version. It is only when he opens an existing report (authored in a newer version of Desktop ) in the Jan 2019 desktop that is required for the Jan 2019 version of PBIRS that he gets this issue. So I believe my original suggestions still stand.

[Anonymous]

OK. So it turns out that you can install PBI desktop from three potential locations - your org instance, the public powerBI site, or the MS store. The silly thing is that these are not always in sync.

https://sqlserverbi.blog/2018/02/03/managing-multiple-power-bi-desktop-application-versions/

Essentially, I guess pick one install point for everyone on your team building reports and use it consistently to avoid this error.

[d_gosbell]

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@Anonymous wrote:

OK. So it turns out that you can install PBI desktop from three potential locations - your org instance, the public powerBI site, or the MS store. The silly thing is that these are not always in sync.

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The public site and store versions will always be pretty much in synch although the store versions will auto update and you have to update the other version manually. These versions are both designed to work with the cloud service (eg. powerbi.com)

If you are using an on-prem Power BI Report Server instance you could only install the version from your "org instance" so that the desktop version matches the report server version. The install link on your Report Server is designed to be out of synch with the 2 cloud targeted versions in order to avoid errors like the one you are seeing.

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

So you could try making a trivial change to the query in the old version and see if you can then re-save the file. This may clear this warning. Otherwise I think you'd either need to re-build the report in the new version or wait until the next update to PBIRS (which is due to be released in May) at which point you can update to that.