PBI Report Server Email Distribution Sent But Not Received

Hi lynnma , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

This usually isn’t a problem with PBIRS itself or your SMTP settings, but rather with how your distribution group is configured in Exchange. The distribution group maybe set to reject unauthenticated senders and since your PBIRS SMTP setup uses no authentication, Exchange silently drops the message. To fix this, ask your Exchange or IT admin to run this command:

Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "YourGroupName" -RequireSenderAuthenticationEnabled $false

This allows anonymous emails, like those from PBIRS to be accepted by the group. It’s a safe change in most internal environments but should be cleared with your security team. Next, ensure the sender address you’ve configured is a real mailbox or alias in Exchange. If it isn’t recognized, Exchange may also refuse to deliver the message to a group even though it works for individual addresses.

If the issue persists after that, check SMTP server logs or have your admin inspect Exchange message tracking logs for signs that the message was dropped or rejected after handoff. You can also check the PBIRS logs at:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Power BI Report Server\PBIRS\LogFiles

If this helped solve the issue, please consider marking it “Accept as Solution” and giving a ‘Kudos’ so others with similar queries may find it more easily. If not, please share the details, always happy to help.
Thank you.