Forum Discussion

mohammadh410's avatar
mohammadh410
New Member
2 months ago
Solved

Report Pages are not being shown

Issue summary:
When downloading a Power BI report (.pbix) from the Power BI Service, the downloaded file opens in Power BI Desktop with the data model fully intact (tables, relationships, measures all present) but with zero report pages. The report displays correctly with all pages when viewed directly in the Power BI Service web app. This is affecting multiple reports across our workspace, including reports that have not been edited in months.

Environment:
- Power BI Desktop version: 2.155.756.0 64-bit (June 2026 release), fully up to date
- License: Power BI Pro
- Both "Store reports using enhanced metadata format (PBIR)" and "Store PBIX reports using enhanced metadata format (PBIR)" preview features are enabled in Desktop
- Affected reports are connected to on-premises SQL Server (via on-premises data gateway) and Dataverse semantic models, refreshed on a daily schedule (no incremental refresh, no large semantic model storage format, no Direct Lake)

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open the affected report in the Power BI Service web app - all report pages display correctly
2. Download the report as a .pbix file ("Download this file" > a copy of the report and data)
3. Open the downloaded .pbix in Power BI Desktop
4. Result: report opens with the full data model but zero report pages/tabs visible. Page navigator and page tabs are empty.

Troubleshooting already performed (all unsuccessful):
- Cleared Power BI Desktop cache and NLP cache
- Fully uninstalled Power BI Desktop, deleted %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Power BI Desktop, and reinstalled from the official installer
- Confirmed the issue occurs identically on a second, completely separate machine/user account (colleague downloaded the same report independently and also saw zero pages) - this rules out any local installation, cache, or WebView2 issue
- Confirmed older locally-stored backup .pbix files for the same reports (downloaded prior to this issue starting) still open correctly with all pages intact, which narrows the issue down to something that changed in how reports are now exported/downloaded from the Service, not a local Desktop problem
- As a further diagnostic test, created a brand new workspace and published one of the broken downloaded .pbix files into it - the new workspace's web view of that republished report is also blank/missing pages, confirming the pages are genuinely missing from the exported file itself, not a Desktop rendering issue



any ideas ? 

Need Help

5 Replies

  • MartinDechet's avatar
    MartinDechet
    New Member
    2 months ago

    We are experiencing exactly the same issue across multiple users and different versions of PBI desktop ( 2.154.1260.0 64-bit and  2.155.756.0 64-bit. 

    Reports downloaded in previous days work without issues, new downloads have page tabs empty. 

  • seanwibailey's avatar
    seanwibailey
    New Member
    2 months ago

    Experiencing the same issue, however I've had multiple people on my team try, 1 successfully downloaded the file and was able to see the Report Pages correctly and another wasn't.  Troubleshooting this one has been difficult. 

     

    Update: Our problem has self-resolved, the pbix downloaded this morning are still broken, but new file downloads are now working. 

  • parry2k's avatar
    parry2k
    Icon for Super User rankSuper User
    2 months ago

    mohammadh410 seanwibailey MartinDechet 

     

    there is a change from MSFT:

     

    if you download the semantic model, it will not have the report pages.

    if you download the report, it will have report pages and the model

     

    So make sure you are downloading the report, not the semantic model. I hope this helps.

     

  • mussaenda's avatar
    mussaenda
    Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion
    2 months ago

    Hi mohammadh410 ,

     

    I thought this was an isolated case because it happened to me yesterday.

    I just deleted the downloaded file and  re-downloaded it and it fixed the issue.

     

    Hope this helps.

  • mohammadh410's avatar
    mohammadh410
    New Member
    2 months ago

    mussaenda seanwibailey MartinDechet 

     

    Regarding the solution: 
    I talked to the teamselves: 
    there is a workaround, which you have to download the semantic model from the report it selves. means
    - open up the report using webservice. 
    - from top bar, select the File
    - download this File

    ---------

    EMEA Power BI team mentioned this problem was expected according to this article (in case you wanna know more): 
    Download a Report from the Power BI Service to Power BI Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Learn


    Conclusion: 

    They fixed it and did revert the changes so by now you should be able to: 
    1) download the pbix file normally. (the semantic model) 
    2) use the workaround 

     

    parry2k thanks a lot for your response