How to Export a Visual from Power BI

You’ve done the hard work of connecting your data sources, building a data model, and creating a perfect visual in Power BI. Now, you need to share it with your team, pop it into a presentation, or send it in an email. This article will show you exactly how to export visuals and reports from Power BI, breaking down the different formats and when to use each one.

Why Export Visuals from Power BI?

While the goal of Power BI is to create interactive, dynamic dashboards, there are plenty of valid reasons to pull a static copy of a chart or report page. Sharing a live Power BI report isn't always practical, especially if you're communicating with stakeholders who don't have access or aren't comfortable navigating the platform.

Common uses for exporting include:

• Presentations: Dropping a key performance indicator (KPI) chart directly onto a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation.

• Static Reports: Including visuals in a monthly PDF or Word document for management or clients.

• Email Updates: Quickly sharing a performance snapshot with your team in an email without requiring them to log into another platform.

• Archiving: Saving a Point-in-Time (PIT) snapshot of a report, which can be useful for historical tracking and compliance.

• Further Analysis: Exporting the underlying data to a spreadsheet to perform more complex calculations or blend it with other data sources in Excel.

Understanding how to do this simple task saves you from the old-fashioned screenshot-and-crop method, giving you cleaner, higher-quality visuals for all your reporting needs.

Before You Export: Key Considerations

Before you start clicking, there are a few important things to know about exporting from Power BI. These limitations can sometimes trip people up, so it's good to be aware of them upfront.

Admin Settings and Permissions

If you find that an export option is greyed out and you can't click on it, it's almost always because your Power BI administrator has disabled that feature for your organization or for your specific user role. Admins can control exporting to formats like CSV, Excel, PDF, and PowerPoint for security and data governance reasons. If you can’t export, you’ll need to chat with your IT department or Power BI admin.

Visual Limitations

Microsoft certifies most of its native visuals for exporting, but not all visuals are created equal. You may run into issues when trying to export:

• Custom visuals: Visuals you downloaded from the AppSource marketplace may or may not support exporting. If the developer didn’t enable it, you won't be able to export it.

• R or Python visuals: These scripting-based visuals often cannot be exported to static formats.

• Background Images: Some report background settings may not carry over correctly when exporting to certain formats, particularly PowerPoint.

Row Limits for Data Exports

Power BI is designed for visualizing large datasets, not exporting them in bulk. Because of this, Microsoft imposes limits on the number of rows you can export to prevent performance issues:

• .xlsx (Excel): When exporting summarized data, you have a limit of 150,000 rows.

• .csv (Comma-Separated Values): When exporting the underlying data, you have a limit of 30,000 rows.

If your dataset exceeds these limits, Power BI will export up to the limit and show an error message. For exporting millions of rows, you’d need to use more advanced tools like Power Automate, paginated reports, or DAX Studio.

Static vs. Interactive Data

This is the most critical point to remember: when you export a visual, you lose all interactivity. The exported image, PDF, or PowerPoint slide is just a static picture of your data at that moment. You can’t click, filter, or drill down into an exported image. The main benefit of Power BI is its dynamic nature, which disappears the moment you export.

How to Export a Single Visual (Step-by-Step)

Let's start with the most common scenario: you need to grab just one specific chart or table from your report. You can either export it as an image or pull its underlying data into a spreadsheet.

Option 1: Exporting as an Image (.png)

This is your go-to method for popping a visual into a presentation or email. It's quick, simple, and gives you a clean image file.

1. Navigate to your report in the Power BI service (the online version).

2. Hover your mouse over the visual you want to export.

3. Click the … (More options) icon that appears in the top-right corner of the visual’s container.

4. From the dropdown menu, select Export data. Don’t worry, you’ll get the image option in the next step.

5. A dialog box will appear. Select the card that says Summarized data.

6. Underneath, change the File format dropdown from .xlsx to .png (With current layout).

7. Click the blue Export button.

After a moment, your browser will download a .png file of your visual. It will capture the chart exactly as it appears on your screen, including the current filters and slicer selections. This is perfect for a quick, high-quality snapshot.

Option 2: Exporting Data to Excel or CSV

Sometimes you need the numbers behind the visual. Power BI gives you two powerful options for this: exporting what you see (summarized data) or exporting the raw data behind it (underlying data).

How to Export Summarized Data

Summarized data gives you a table of the exact data points used to render the visual. For example, if you have a bar chart showing website sessions by country, this export will give you a spreadsheet with two columns: Country and Sessions.

1. Hover over the visual and click the … (More options) icon.

2. Select Export data.

3. In the dialog that appears, make sure Summarized data is selected.

4. Keep the File format as .xlsx (Excel) with live connection or choose .csv if you prefer. The live connection option allows you to refresh the data later in Excel.

5. Click Export. You’ll get an Excel file containing exactly the data displayed in the visual.

How to Export Underlying Data

The "Underlying data" option gives you access to the detailed, row-level data that feeds the visual - up to the 30,000-row limit. In our website sessions example, instead of just the totals per country, this would give you the individual records Power BI used to create the summarization.

1. Hover over the visual and click the … (More options) icon.

2. Select Export data.

3. This time, select the Underlying data card.

4. Your only file format option here will be .csv.

5. Click Export. You will get a CSV file with far more detailed data, including columns that may not even be present in your visual but exist in the source data table.

How to Export an Entire Report Page

If you need to share a complete dashboard view instead of just a single chart, exporting the entire report page is the way to go. Your main options are PDF and PowerPoint.

Exporting to PDF

Creating a PDF is perfect for generating a professional, printable report that preserves the exact layout of your dashboard page.

1. With your report open in the Power BI service, go to the top menu bar and click Export.

2. In the dropdown, select PDF.

3. An options window will appear. Here, you can choose things like:

   • Current values vs. Default values: "Current values" will capture any filters and slicers you currently have applied. "Default values" will export the page in its original, unfiltered state.

   • Exclude hidden report tabs: If your report has pages hidden from viewers, you can choose whether or not to include them in the PDF.

4. Click Export. Power BI will work for a minute preparing the file, and then your browser will prompt you to download the PDF.

Exporting to PowerPoint

This is fantastic for presentation prep. Power BI will create a PowerPoint file where each report page is a separate, high-resolution image on its own slide.

1. In your report, click Export in the top menu.

2. Select PowerPoint.

3. From the options, you can choose to either embed an image of the report (Embed an image) or embed live data that can be refreshed (Embed live data). Choose the "Embed an image" option for a standard export.

4. Just like the PDF export, choose between "Current values" or "Default values."

5. Click Export.

A huge advantage of the PowerPoint export is that each slide automatically includes a link back to the live Power BI report. This allows you to present the static slides but quickly jump back to the interactive report if a stakeholder asks a question that requires you to dig deeper.

Final Thoughts

Exporting visuals and data is a fundamental skill for any Power BI user, allowing you to seamlessly share your findings in documents, presentations, and emails. By understanding the different formats and their limitations, you can choose the best method for any situation, whether you need a quick image for a slide or underlying data for deep-dive analysis in Excel.

While exporting static files is necessary for formal reports, it can lead to endless follow-up questions and repetitive work. You send a chart, someone asks for a different date range, and you're back in Power BI re-filtering and exporting all over again. We built Graphed to break that cycle by making live data analysis effortless. Instead of wrangling with complex tools and manual exports, you can just ask questions in plain English to instantly create real-time, shareable dashboards. This empowers your whole team to get the answers they need on their own, right when they need them.