Republish Over Existing Report?

[CmdrKeene]

Short story: I used the PBI app (website) to make a lot of customizations to a report after publishing it. Added pages and visualizations, updated filters on them, pinned those visuals to dashboards.

Some time later (a few months), I realized there was a missing relationship between two of the tables on the report. It wasn't making anything inaccurate because no filters/data was coming the other table until now.

Since my local PBIX file was so outdated (months old and without the new visuals/pages/filters/etc.), I used the "Download a PBIX copy" from the ••• menu on the report online.  I added the missing relationship and clicked "publish".

Turns out, it published a new report with an identical name, rather than overwriting the original one.  Well that's no good!

I could delete the old one, but a lot of content from it is pinned to dashboards and I don't want to have to redo that work or impact others.

So, how can I save over the report on the site, after downloading a PBIX of that report from the site?

[v-lid-msft]

Hi @CmdrKeene ,

Based on my test, download as pbix file and republish it from desktop should work, we 

1. We publish a report with only one visual

2. we add some visuals and download as a pbix file

3. Then we open this download file in Power BI desktop, add some new rows.

4. We publish it with the same name and replce the report in Power BI Service

5. We open the report and refresh it

Please consider some limitation when you republish from desktop and replace report in service based on this document:

• If you already have two or more datasets in Power BI with the same name as the Power BI Desktop file, publish could fail. Make sure you have only one dataset in Power BI with the same name. You can also rename the file and publish, creating a new dataset with same name as the file.
• If you rename or delete a column or measure, any visualizations you already have in Power BI with that field could be broken.
• If you have a refresh schedule configured for your existing dataset in Power BI and you add new data sources to your file and then re-publish, you’ll have to sign into them in Manage Data Sources prior to the next scheduled refresh.

Best regards,

[CmdrKeene]

Thanks for the very good information, but unfortunately there must be some other situation I'm coming across because those limitations don't seem to be applicable to my circumstance right now.

[venal]

@CmdrKeene 

Please submit a support ticket to investigate.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/support/ --> Create Support Ticket.

Please share the support ticket number here for quick traction on it.

BR 

venal.

[CmdrKeene · Accepted solution]

I have great news. I had a support ticket # 120010921001546, and it's resolved.  All I needed to do was go to the Dataset settings online and rename the data set to match the name of the .pbix file I had downloaded. Then publishing it from the desktop app again prompted with the expected "do you wish to replace the existing", which of course I did and it's successful.

[nswitzer]

In my case, I had to change the name of the online report and pbix report file so that it didn't match the dataset name. Then I was allowed to publish / overwrite the report, then change the name back. 

Awesome handle CmdrKeene!

[GilbertQ]

Hi there

If this happens is your original Power BI report linked from OneDrive?

If that is the case the only solution is to re-upload and then make all the dashboard changes.

Here are more details as to why this might be happening: https://powerbi.tips/2019/09/updating-pbix-files-in-sharepoint-dos-donts/