View a report in the Power BI service for business users

APPLIES TO: Power BI service for business users Power BI service for designers & developers Power BI Desktop Requires Pro or Premium license

A Power BI report is one or more pages of organized visuals. Power BI designers create reports and share them directly with business users, or add them to an app. You must have a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User license to open a report that has been shared with you, unless the report is stored in Premium capacity. A user with any Power BI license can have access to reports stored in Premium capacity or in their own My workspace. For more information, see Licenses and subscriptions for business users.

Explore the following guidance to learn how to open a report from the Browse page and from a dashboard.

Open a report that's been shared with you

Power BI designers can share a report with you by sending an email link or by adding the report to your Power BI content. These reports are located under Shared with me in the Browse tab.

  1. Open the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com), and sign in if you're prompted.

    Screenshot showing the Home page of the Power BI service.

  2. On the navigation pane, select Browse, and on the Browse page, select Shared with me.

    Screenshot showing the Browse page and Shared with me is outlined.

  3. The report icon is displayed next to the report name. Open the Sales and Marketing Sample report.

    Screenshot showing the Sales and Marketing Sample report from the Shared with me list.

  4. Notice the tabs along the left side. Each tab represents a report page. Select the YTD Category tab to open the YTD Category Trend Analysis page.

    Screenshot showing the YTD Category Trend Analysis page open.

  5. Expand the Filters pane along the right side. Filters that are applied to this report page, or to the entire report, are displayed here. You can change these filters to see the impact on your visuals and report.

    Screenshot showing the Power BI service with Filters expanded.

  6. Hover over a visual to show the actions you can perform. To see the filters applied to a specific visual, select the filter icon.

    Screenshot showing filters for the selected visual.

  7. You can also change the display (zoom) of the report page. On the action bar, select the View icon, and then select Actual size. Notice the difference that view option makes in how Power BI displays your report.

    Screenshot showing the Actual size view.

  8. On the action bar, select the View icon, and then select Fit to width. Notice the difference that view option makes in how Power BI displays your report.

    Screenshot showing the Fit to width view.

There are many ways for you to interact with a report to discover insights and make business decisions. Other articles about Power BI reports are available in the table of contents.

Open a report that's in an app

The apps you receive from colleagues are located on the Home page and in the Apps container on your navigation pane. An app is a collection of dashboards and reports that a Power BI designer compiles for you.

You must have a Power BI Pro license to open an app unless the app workspace is stored in Premium capacity. A user with any Power BI license can have access to reports stored in Premium capacity.

You can follow along in this tutorial with Microsoft sample content.

  1. In your browser, go to appsource.microsoft.com.

  2. Search for "Sales & Marketing" and select Microsoft sample - Sales & Marketing.

  3. Select Get it now > Continue > Install to install the app in your Apps container.

  4. Go back to Home by selecting Home from the navigation pane.

  5. Scroll down and select My Apps.

    Screenshot shows the My apps section of Power BI Home.

  6. Select your new Sales and Marketing app to open it. Depending on the options set by the app designer, the app opens to a dashboard or a report. This app opens to a dashboard.

Open a report from a dashboard

Most dashboard tiles are pinned from reports. Selecting a tile opens the report that was used to create the tile.

  1. From the Sales and Marketing dashboard, select the Total Units YTD Variance % column chart tile.

    Screenshot showing a dashboard and a tile is selected.

  2. The associated report opens to the YTD Category Trend Analysis page because this is where the chart is located in the report.

    Screenshot showing the YTD Category Trend Analysis page.

Note

Not all tiles lead to a report. If you select a tile that was created with Q&A, the Q&A screen opens. If you select a tile that was created using the dashboard Add tile widget, a video, website, or other content might open.

More ways to open a report

As you get more comfortable navigating the Power BI service, you'll figure out workflows that are best for you. A few other ways to access reports:

Next steps

Open and view a dashboard
Explore the report Filters pane