Power BI Service, Paginated Report Builder - why some unicode glyphs not displaying

[garythomannCoGC]

14-12-2022  caveat, RB: both Print Layout and Default View have issues, Service: Print Layout has issues but Default View works fine displaying all my selected Geographic shapes unicode glyphs.  See screenshots added to today's reply.

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Have selected unicode characters from the  Geometric Shapes  subset from the unicode universe.  In Report Builder the unicode glyph 9670 Black Diamond is not displaying.  Only a square bracket symbol comes up.  The Black Diamond glyph does display for the query in dax studio.  

Screenshot of report builder run

Screenshot of dax studio run for the query

Screenshot of my unicode table as displayed via query in dax studio

Another mystery, Unicode Number column is declared as Text

Create a Report Builder test report to display this table. 

This is the query and dax studio output.

Unicode Number column fails to display and most of the unicode unichar conversions fail.

[garythomannCoGC]

14-12-2022 caveat, screenshots for Glyph Test.rdl

Unichar Glyph's that do not render are displayed as square box.

Here is the link to the rdl report builder report that I created. 

And associated csv dump from dax studio of the input table being queried.

Glyph Test.rdl 

CPP Traffic Light Short Status.xlsx 

Power BI Paginated Report Builder  (RB)

Default View

Print Layout View

Power BI Service

Default Web Layout View

Print Layout View

[garythomannCoGC]

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[garythomannCoGC]

Power BI Paginated Report Builder - Unicode Symbols - toggle the Print Layout button 

Cross post as this is the main thread ...

[garythomannCoGC]

Still an issue, my mistake.  Page View on the service emulates PDF printing.  Export to Word is working but not PDF.

Adding this link and it and associated sublinks is relevant.

SSRS Custom Font errors during the PDF processing export 

Next is IT department involvement. for admin installs.

[garythomannCoGC]

Created a test report called Glyph Test.   Dax Studio ...

Report Builder ...

Power BI Service - Default view  (see my next reply for Page View screenshot  20220728 gt)

So our Service has a more complete unicode set than Report Builder.  So at this stage it looks like making a request to our IT department to add the missing unicode set to Report Builder.  I do not have admin rights so its a long process of 'paperwork'.

[v-cgao-msft]

Hi @garythomannCoGC ,

Please refer to these two posts, starting with regional and system versions, I hope it will help.

Solved: Unicode arrows problem

Solved: UNICHAR characters not displaying correctly for so...

If your report builder is not up to date, please try the latest version of the report builder.

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Best Regards,
Gao
Community Support Team

If there is any post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. If I misunderstand your needs or you still have problems on it, please feel free to let us know. Thanks a lot!

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[garythomannCoGC]

Thanks for your reply.  Your post came through at the same time as my last one.  Will have look.  Thanks

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

The difference between the default view and the print preview from app.powerbi.com is almost certainly a difference in the available fonts. When you view the default web page Power BI will send html to the client browser and that will have access to local fonts on your PC. When you do a print preview the service will generate a PDF on the server side using the fonts available on the Power BI rendering nodes. If the exact font is not available the operating system then has rules it uses to find the closest similar font. And unfortunately not all fonts have the full unicode character set.

 

I did some tests using a number of different fonts and found that Segoe UI Symbol seemed to have the best support for extended Unicode characters. If you are putting your indicators in their own column this might work for you.