Publish & Share Your Report
One Publish button sends your report to the Power BI Service so others can open it in a browser.
What you will learn
- Publish from Desktop to the Service
- Find your report online in a workspace
- Share it and refresh the data
Getting your work to other people
A dashboard is only useful if your team can see it. You built it in Desktop; to share it you send it to the Power BI Service — the website at app.powerbi.com — with a single button.
Publishing — step by step
- Save your file first — Power BI saves your whole report (data, model and visuals) in one file with a
.pbixending, which is just the Power BI Desktop file type. - On the Home ribbon, click Publish.
- Sign in with your Microsoft work or school account if asked.
- Pick a workspace (start with My workspace) and click Select.
- When it finishes, click the Open in Power BI link.
Power BI Desktop ──[ Publish ]──> Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com)
your .pbix file opens in any web browserNote: Output: A “Publishing succeeded” message appears with a clickable link. Following it opens your report in the browser — fully interactive, slicers and all. It now lives in your chosen workspace, ready to be shared, with no Power BI install needed to view it.
Sharing and keeping it fresh
| Task | In the Service you… |
|---|---|
| Share with a colleague | Open the report → Share → enter their email |
| Keep numbers up to date | Set up Scheduled refresh on the dataset |
| View on a phone | Open it in the Power BI Mobile app |
| Group reports together | Pin visuals to a Dashboard in the workspace |
A key idea: the published report still points at your data source. Set a scheduled refresh (for example, every morning) and the Service re-pulls the latest data so viewers always see current numbers — without you reopening Desktop.
Tip: Re-publishing the same file just overwrites the old version in the workspace. So your update flow is simple: edit in Desktop → click Publish again → everyone sees the new version.
Watch out: Sharing usually needs a Power BI Pro licence (or the content in a Premium capacity), and people you share with need access too. For practice on a free account, you can still publish to My workspace and view it yourself.
Q. What does the Publish button in Power BI Desktop do?
✍️ Practice
- Publish a report to My workspace and open it in your browser.
- In the Service, find the Share button and the dataset’s refresh settings.
🏠 Homework
- Publish one of your dashboards, then write the exact steps you would give a colleague to open and use it.