Changes published to an existing report not showing

[WLT_XW]

Hello PBI developers,

My current reports (using live connection to a semantic model) are in the Workspace. The changes I made further to the reports and then published to the workspace were not reflected - the reports are still showing the old version. It only works if I deleted those reports and republish them again.

Any thoughts / suggestion on those issue? Thanks

[Poojara_D12]

Hi @WLT_XW 

What you’re experiencing is a common behavior in Power BI when using live connections to a semantic model (dataset). In this setup, when you make changes to a report file (.pbix) that connects live to a dataset already published in a workspace, and then republish it, Power BI only overwrites the report definition, not the underlying dataset. However, if a report with the same name already exists in the workspace, Power BI does not always automatically overwrite it — particularly if the report was originally created or modified directly in the Power BI Service. In those cases, the service keeps the existing version and ignores your new upload, which is why you see no visible updates until you delete the old report and republish it. This happens because Power BI uses an internal ID to track reports, and conflicts between locally published and service-created reports prevent automatic version replacement.

To avoid this in the future, ensure that the report name in Desktop exactly matches the existing one in the workspace and that you have edit permissions on it. If you still encounter issues, you can instead publish the report to a different workspace or use the “Upload a file → Power BI Desktop” option directly in the service, which forces an overwrite. Alternatively, you can manage the report through Power BI Deployment Pipelines or the REST API for version-controlled updates. In short, your reports aren’t updating because Power BI doesn’t automatically overwrite existing service-side report versions linked to the same dataset unless explicitly deleted or replaced.

[WLT_XW]

Thanks for your reply @Poojara_D12 . As per your suggestions, I don't see [use the “Upload a file → Power BI Desktop” option directly in the service, which forces an overwrite] this option in my workspace - are you referring to "Import"?

Also I don't have issue with PBIX live connection, only PBIP caused the issue I mentioned so I'd like to know how live connection works with PBIP and if it's a known issue from Microsoft, or there are any limitations we can take a look on that

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @WLT_XW,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum. Also, thanks to @MattiaFratello, for his inputs on this thread.

I understand you are seeing that the changes you published to your reports (connected live to a semantic model) aren’t reflected in the Service unless you delete and republish the report that can be frustrating.

This behaviour usually occurs when the updated report in your workspace hasn’t fully replaced the existing version, or when users are still viewing an older copy (for example, through an App or cached browser view). Here are a few checks that normally resolve it:

If the report is shared via an App, please republish or update the App after making changes in the workspace otherwise, users will still see the old version. Confirm the report is being published to the same workspace and same name so it overwrites the existing one rather than creating a new copy.

Try opening the report in a private/incognito browser window to rule out caching. If the report visuals are pinned to a dashboard, try repining them pinned tiles do not automatically update when the report layout changes. Check with your Power BI admin that the tenant setting “Block republish and disable package refresh” is not enabled, since this can prevent replacing reports.

Refer this link:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-in/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-troubleshoot-publish 

Hope that clarifies. Let us know if you have any doubts regarding this. We will be happy to help.

Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

[WLT_XW]

Hi @v-kpoloju-msft  just follow up on that, is that potentially a PBIP issue, if so, any where I can raise it? or the platform suggests users to use PBIX with live connection for now? Thanks

[v-kpoloju-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @WLT_XW,

Thanks for following up and for sharing those details that really helps narrow it down.

From what you described, it looks like the issue is related to using the PBIP (Power BI Project) format for both your semantic model and live-connected reports. The PBIP format is still relatively new and has a few known limitations when publishing or linking live datasets. That’s likely why your publish works as expected when switching both files back to PBIX. To confirm, please try the following steps:

Publish the semantic model first (PBIP or PBIX). Then publish the report that connects to it. If it still fails in PBIP, please use PBIX as a stable workaround for now this is the recommended approach until PBIP gains full parity for publish scenarios.

Refer these links:
1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/projects/projects-overview 
2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/create-reports/desktop-troubleshoot-publish 

Hope this clears it up. Let us know if you have any doubts regarding this. We will be happy to help.

Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

[jvcampbell]

Hi @v-kpoloju-msft 

I think there's some ambiguity around this work-around.

Do do you mean use PBIP for development and then stage the report to PBIX before publishing? Or do you mean only use PBIX for development and publishing?

1. 

If a developer is making changes to the PBIP version of the report, which you'd want to do because of the benefits of using git, and then stage the report by saving it as a PBIX before publishing it, publishing the PBIX then has the same problem. i.e. The service asks you if you want to replace it, and when you answer 'Replace' it tells you that it was published. However, it still hasn't replaced it (or published it).

2.

If you're saying that we should maintain the original PBIX - doing all our development in the original and doing our publishing from the same - then PBIP is pointless.

Someone else in this thread mentioned deleting the target report on the service manually and then re-publishing.

The whole point to using PBIP is to use good application lifecycle management practices. If we need to delete the target manually then we can't use the deployment pipelines. i.e. When you delete the target report and republish from the PBIP, and if it gets a new internal id, then I'm assuming that the deployment pipeline won't work either. Won't this be the case?

Thanks

[WLT_XW]

Thanks for the replies. I've checked what's been suggested but not really works. My reports are not in an App or dashboard, and it's not cached (I have a few of colleagues helped to view the reports from their ends). 

What I found is currently both the Semantic Model and the reports that live connect to the semantic model are in PBIP (as we are using Github), and when both are in PBIP, the publish didn't work. But when I converted both to PBIX, the publish works.

So I was wondering if this is caused by then PBIP format? Any suggestions or known issues on that?

[MattiaFratello]

Have you tried to clear the browser cache or use an incognito session?

Additionally, could it be that you created a 2nd semantic model and forgot to bind the report to the new semantic model?

I found also this thread but I believe it's not exactly your case -> https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/reports/rebind-report-in-group

If helpful, please give kudos and mark as solution