unable to publish from on-premise report server to website

[tgg3]

As stated in subject line, I am unable to publish from our desktop appliance either newly created or existing reports to web report server site. This used to be fairly easy, but it has been a while since we've had to publish soemthing new. I am on September 2025 version of report server and desktop. Publish is just grayed out and unselectable. When I attempt to save the newly created reports I get

"Unable to save document

An error occured while attempting to save the report to Power BI Report Server"

Where do I begin to look and figure out how to reenable the Publish button?

[v-saisrao-msft]

Hi @tgg3,

Have you had a chance to review the solution we shared @Aala_Ali? If the issue persists, feel free to reply so we can help further.

Thank you.

[tgg3]

I have received the response but since it came in on a Saturday I haven't been able to walk through the system and verify what was provided. On Wednesday I should be able to respond. My first thought is that the Report Server itself may not have been updated to September release but the desktops have. Also, we used to be able to select publish to get reports to the RS site. Forgive me if that functionality has changed now. It has been a while since we've had to publish new reports on this server. We did try uploading a new report to the RS site but it became disjoined from its source data on the share drive it is housed in. In the desktop app it refreshes fine but the RS site report never refreshes. 

[v-saisrao-msft]

Hi @tgg3,

Were you able to review the solution? You mentioned you’d respond by Wednesday. check if the issue is still occurring after your testing.

Thank you.

[tgg3]

I have not been able to really dig into it (we were heavy into a Win11 push ahead of the Oct 14th deadline). I did find out that our RS itself is not on the Sept release but the desktops are. That will get remedied on Tuesday during our maintenance window. 

[v-saisrao-msft]

Hi @tgg3,

Hi, just checking in after Tuesday’s maintenance window, were you able to verify if the issue is resolved

thank you.

[Aala_Ali · Accepted solution]

Hi @tgg3 

In PBIRS you don’t use Publish (that’s for the cloud). Use File → Save As → Power BI Report Server or Upload the .pbix in the PBIRS web portal.

Do this to fix the error:

Open Power BI Desktop for Power BI Report Server (RS-optimized), September 2025 build 2.147.1088.0 (x64), and confirm your server is also September 2025. Version parity matters.

Try File → Save As → Power BI Report Server. If that still fails, Upload the .pbix via the portal to the same folder.

Ensure you’re using Integrated Windows Auth and have Publisher/Content Manager on the target folder. PBIRS Desktop doesn’t support saving with custom security/Basic auth—use portal upload in that case.

If you still get “Unable to save,” restart the PBIRS service and retry—this has cleared the issue for others.

If the .pbix was authored in the regular Desktop, it might include features not supported by PBIRS. Recreate using the RS Desktop, or copy queries/measures/visuals into a new RS file (works well).

Note: If you were aiming for Publish to web (public), that’s a Power BI Service feature and not available on PBIRS. You’d need to publish to the cloud service and have your admin allow Publish to web.

If this helps, please mark as Accepted Solution and drop a "Kudos" 👍

[tgg3]

Aala_Ali, thank you. Those steps worked after upgrading my RS to the latest release to match the desktop appliance. I am able to follow both options for saving new reports to the local web site and they both work. 

[tgg3]

@Aala_Ali thank you for your response. I have provided some input back to the community support post on my question but I will reveiw the system on Wednesday and provide insight to your assistance. Thank you again.