Use Home in Power BI Desktop

Power BI Home is a central location for your Power BI content, and is designed to consolidate your Power BI tasks into a single location, eliminating the need to navigate through multiple menus.

The following sections describe the areas and functionality of Power BI Home.

Open a new report

You can open a new report by expanding the New section in Power BI Desktop Home, and selecting Report.

Screenshot of creating a new report in Power BI Desktop home.

Selecting Report button creates a new report, and opens a blank canvas on which you can add data and begin building your report.

Screenshot of a blank report canvas in Power BI Desktop.

You can open existing reports from the Recommended section of Power BI Home. Files are recommended if they've been recently viewed, edited, edited by someone else, or shared with you.

Screenshot of recommended reports in Power BI Desktop home.

You can collapse the New and Recommended sections by selecting the small arrow next to their titles.

Quick access list

In Power BI Home, a list of reports you've recently accessed is displayed below the Recent section. Each item shows the file name, its location, and the last time you opened the file.

When you select the Shared with Me button at the top of the quick access list, the quick access list displays files that are shared by people in the same organization. Providing a central location for shared files makes it easier to work together in Power BI.

Screenshot of shared reports in Power BI Desktop home.

Viewing reports in Power BI Desktop Home

To view a report in Power BI Desktop Home, you must meet the following requirements:

  • Have access to the file being displayed
  • Have a Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium Per User, or E5 license.

Considerations and limitations

You should keep the following considerations in mind when using Power BI Desktop Home:

  • B2B users and anonymous users can't search files in Power BI Desktop.
  • If substrate capability is turned off for your organization, Power BI Home doesn't display Recommended files, you'll only see local files.
  • Power BI Home features don't work with personal OneDrive accounts.
  • Power BI Home features aren't available in a sovereign cloud tenant.
  • Reports with row-level security aren't currently displayed in the Recommended list. You must download such files to see or use them in Power BI Desktop.