Power bi report server upload

[witty]

Hi everyone,

I have been having trouble uploading .pbix files to Power BI server, I am getting the following error

"An error has occurred.
There was an error uploading your .pbix file. Verify that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file."

One thing I noticed is that:

There are a few existing dashboards in the Power BI server, when I downloaded an existing report, and re-uploaded it to the server, it was fine.
But when I downloaded the existing report, updated the report using Power BI Desktop (e.g. updated time range slicer, added more data), and uploaded this report. the error message popped up.

The version of Power BI desktop to create the .pbxi files is: (May 2021)

And the version of the Power BI server is: (January 2021)

I wonder if the Power BI server with a slightly older version is really the reason that I can't upload the report but not sure. I am fairly new to Power BI, much appreciated for any thoughts on my problem.

Thanks

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

---

@witty wrote:

I wonder if the Power BI server with a slightly older version is really the reason that I can't upload the report but not sure. I am fairly new to Power BI, much appreciated for any thoughts on my problem.

---

Yes this is almost definitely the issue. Every release of Power BI Report Server comes with a matching release of desktop and it is important to always use the version of Desktop that is the same release (or earlier) as the Server. If you don't you run into issues like this where Desktop uses new features that the Server is not aware of and it cannot render the files.

It is a bit tricky no though as if you uninstall your version of Desktop and install the older version then the older Desktop will probably not be able to open these reports either. 

The only way to get these reports working is to either upgrade the server (the Jan 21 release is now out of support so it is due to be upgraded see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/support-timeline?WT.mc_id=DP-MVP-35889 ) or you will need to rebuild the reports in the Jan-21 version of Desktop if you still have the installer around. (Microsoft no longer offers this version for download since it is out of support now)