Truely export report or dashboard

[rpm1984]

I really appreciate the attempt that MS has made with the new print to pdf option. However, I am curious if this is a step they have made in that direction or if they feel this has solved the problem? To me it is a step in the right direction but the fact that I can only export one file to pdf and that it does not fit the report page to size correctly still prevents me from using Power BI.

We have many clients and I want to be able to use this to report to them monthly. I cant share out of my organization and even if I could most want to be able to use a pdf or print the whole report to bring to meetings or email to fellow execs. Printing one page of the report or exporting one page simply doesnt cut it. I need to be able to print the whole report and or export the whole report to make Power BI usable. The same is true with dashboards exporting them is great but trying to squeeze the whole dashboard onto one page is rediculous.

So thank you for the update much appreciated but is this it or is there more coming?

[djnww]

Silent push...

[Michiel]

Daniel,

The first thing you asked for is (kind of) available: when printing a dashboard you can select the scale to use. I use this a lot to print a dashboard on a A3 paper. There's a "Shrink to fit" option there as well, but this doesn't really seem to do anything.

When printing a report page you can scale as well, but still we have to print one page at a time.

[djnww]

I thought I'd bring this topic up again hoping someone from the Power BI team notices.

Being able to export to PDF may not seem like a big thing to many, but once you are talking to senior management, then it is the only option. Particularly within Government. Why ? Because a PDF is a snapshop in time and you can print with it. It's reliable and you can take it with you everywhere without having to worry about your internet dropping out. You do not see ministers in parliament debating with their phone dashboards. They have paperwork all around them.

I know of a few organisations that did not adopt Power BI solely due to its inability to export to PDF correctly. It is a simple fix that will please hundreds of government organisations that cannot do without it.

What would be good as a start:

1. Allow a dashboard to scale to the page size. It is silly for a dashboard to only take up a quarter of a page and the left is just white space.

2. Print multiple pages in a report

Regards,

Daniel

[kcantor]

Can you tell me where this new print/export to pdf function can be found? I am not seeing it on my current version.

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@kcantor link of walkthru - It's in the Service, there are multiple places you can print/export to PDF

[kcantor]

I can print and I can export just fine. I simply do not have anything on the export dialog box that allows for Pdf. I can export to Excel, desktop, or csv but pdf is not there. I was misunderstanding your statement and was hoping that it was now possible to export to pdf.

[rpm1984]

You have to go to click print then select print to pdf in the drop down where your printer appears. It only does one page though not the whole report. So if your report is small or you just want a piece of it it will work for you. It doesnt help me because I have multiple pages.

[kcantor]

Yes, print is nice for a small visual and export does okay for a report page. I was hoping to be able to print the report in its entirety using pdf. . This is inline with what I already had so I will keep waiting.

[rpm1984]

Exactly I cant use it for the majority of my needs. If i could export the whole report to pdf this would be such a useful tool. Instead its pretty much a toy for me. It clearly wasnt designed to report to clients or take to meetings.

[kcantor]

I agree and yet I disagree. I believe it was designed to report, its just that we are all a little too entrenched in having a paper copy. I believe that a smaller more agile report is better and yet TPTB want the long details . . . which can't be printed using the current functionality. Right now most of my reports work just fine in the digitial world but there are still a handful of people who absolutely must have the paper copy. That means I maintain two reports, one in BI and one in PowerPivot. But hey, at least they are easy to build and maintain.

[Bjoern]

I agree with @rpm1984 in the sense that we should get a "export complete report-file to PDF"-feature. Users will always need that. it is a necessity and needs to be on the roadmap. The "export data" feature is also a bit clumsy right now, I suppoes we will see some improvements there soon. It has also not been flagged as "implemented" in the "submit ideas" area (Look here).

On the other hand I do not understand why e.g. the "publish excel screenshots to Power BI"-feature has been added. Let's wait and see. By now MS has my trust in putting the right things on the roadmap. And the Gartner guys share that view, I think.

// And by the way: For dashboards it does work indeed (as they always only have one page ... :)).