Revert .pbix file to an earlier version

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

do you know if there's any way to read/open a .pbix file  with an earlier version of PBI Desktop? Like a version downgrade or similar?

I'm currently working with a November 2020 .pbix file and the new environment has an older version of PowerBI Desktop that I'm not allowed to update.  It seems it is not even possible to open the file. Here the error message:

Thanks everyone!

[Cleyton]

I was getting rendering error with a file being opened in previous version of Power bi Desktop.
I solved my incompatibility issue by changing 3 files in PBIX.

I saved a file with the previous version empty, then opened it with 7zip and copied the 3 files, Version, Settings and DiagramLayout, to the PBIX that I wanted to open in the previous version.

After saving it opened normally. this between the power bi version of August 2021 and December 2020.

[AkGaur]

Thanks for the solution! Can you please share how you save the Version, Settings and DiagramLayout file in the target file. When I try doing that, I am unzipping the file , replacing them with these three files and zip it again. But that shows file corrupted when we open it in Power BI.

Thanks

[AkshataRevankar]

Try replacing just the settings and version file first and see if it works. Below steps worked for me:

Lets call your report as NewVersion.pbix
Steps:

1. Create a blank report with the older version pbi desktop, save it as OldVersion.pbix
2. right click OldVersion.pbix and unzip it. It will expand into a folder structure
3. Separately unzip your report NewVersion.pbix, this should also result in a expanded folder structure
4. from the expanded OldVersion.pbix folder structure, copy Version and Settings file into the , expanded folder for NewVersion.pbix. It should replace the 2 filed
5. Select all the files in the expanded folder structure for NewVersion.pbix and right click to zip it
6. Once zipped, change the extension to .pbix and open with pbi desktop and that should open the file normally

[Tadsou]

this is just awesome and helped me alot!

[AkshataRevankar]

this worked. Though i needed just the Settings file. This helped me today! thank you! 

[ChukaUdeh]

This worked like a charm, thanks.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous - If the suggestion worked for you, please mark my post as solution to help others find this easily.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous Please check here- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/desktop-latest-update-archive#may-2020-update-2815831621