Forum Discussion

NadyaTj's avatar
NadyaTj
Frequent Visitor
1 year ago

Renaming Power BI files without breaking semantic model refresh

Hi community, 

 

This seems like a silly question but I cannot seem to figure it out. 

 

So I recently created 2 separate reports on Power BI desktop:

For context, the data source for the top report references a published semantic model which is that of the bottom report. 

I recently finalized both reports and would now like to rename them. 

 

I tried taking the approach of renaming from Power BI service. However, since I am referencing the semantic model from one of them, the model breaks when I rename them, saying that it does not know what source I am referring to. Therefore I changed everything back in order not to break anything further. 

 

My thought process is that if i rename the pbix files, whenever I have to republish, it will publish a new model instead of replacing the existing one.

 

Does anyone know of a best practice to rename my pbix files without breaking anything?

 

Cheers.

1 Reply

  • Best practice is not to do that.  It's not just a name change - you will also create a new GUID for the report and the semantic model, and all browser links will break.  Only do that if you are up for the MOC- Management of Change, informing all report users of  the new URLs, creating new bookmarks, etc etc.