Forum Discussion
How to Include images in reports from folder or url or binary data in Power BI Desktop
Ok I solved it... I think. At this time i believe that there is a limitation with both Power BI Desktop and the Online Version in working with both Binary Images and Images from URLs.
However if i design it in Excel 2013 using the Power View module and have the Images display in a Power View Report then I can Get Data using the Power BI Online version and the photos and data will show online in the "Classic Report Canvas". It does not work in the "New Power BI Report Canvas"
It also at this time does not work in Power BI Desktop.
Someone can correct me if I am wrong.
I'm seeing the same thing in Desktop. The minute you flag the field as Binary in the query, it disappears from the import and isn't available in the model or the report. Weird. If you do not specifically flag it as Binary in the query, then it appears in the data model but is the big long hex string.
You may have better luck in Excel:
Although a previous topic I was on we were getting little grey picture icons instead of the actual images.
I have it in excel as a url "http://bidemo.digitalsvr.com/colfireimages/10001.jpg" however it just appears as text http://bidemo.digitalsvr.com/colfireimages/10001.jpg in the Power BI Report and not as an image. Is there anyway to include it as an image?
In your Power Query in Excel, flag it as Binary while editing the query, BEFORE it gets into the data model. Then it should show up as "Binary Data" in the data model. Once that happens, you can set the Data Category to "Image". Let me know if you get the grey photo icons...
Sorry I dont understand... The data is not stored as binary in excel... It is just text in a column which is a url to the photo on an external website. If i flag a binary i get an error.
Is there anyway to use an image from a website with a url pointing to the image?