How to Publish Power BI Report to Website Without Authentication

Sharing a dynamic Power BI report on your public website is a fantastic way to showcase data, but getting it done without forcing viewers to log in can seem tricky. Fortunately, Power BI has a built-in feature for exactly this purpose. This guide will walk you through the entire process, from creating a public embed code to managing your published reports, ensuring you understand the critical security implications along the way.

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First, Should You Publish a Report Publicly?

Before diving into the "how," it's important to understand the "why." Publishing a report publicly means anyone with the link can view and interact with it - no Power BI account or password required. This makes the feature perfect for specific scenarios but a major security risk for others.

Good use cases for public reports include:

• Data Journalism: Embedding interactive charts in articles about census data, election results, or economic trends.
• Marketing Dashboards: Displaying anonymized, high-level data on a public website, like industry trends or survey results.
• Government or Non-Profit Data: Sharing public datasets on community dashboards for citizens, like local health statistics or city budget information.
• Portfolios: Showcasing your data visualization skills to potential employers or clients with a live, interactive example.

If your report contains any sensitive information - customer names, sales figures, internal metrics, or anything you wouldn't want a competitor to see - this method is not for you. For internal or confidential data, you should use secure embedding methods that require user authentication.

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A Critical Warning About the "Publish to Web" Feature

The feature that enables public, no-authentication access is called "Publish to web." When you use it, you are making your report and the data within it publicly available on the internet. This cannot be overstated.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Anyone can see it: Anyone who gets the link can view your report. The link is long and complex, but if it's posted on your website, search engines can index it and a determined person could find it.
• No privacy: Think of it like posting an image publicly. Once it's out there, you lose control over who sees it or shares it. The data in your report should be considered fully public.
• Data is cached: Power BI caches the data for public reports to improve performance, so it might not be real-time. Any updates you make to the report or the underlying data will take time to be reflected in the public version.
• Do NOT use it for proprietary or confidential information. Never. Ever. Employee salaries, PII (personally identifiable information), financial results, or customer lists should never be published this way.

Proceed only if you are 100% confident that the data in your report is safe for public consumption. Power BI will show you a very direct warning when you use this feature - pay close attention to it.

Step-by-Step: How to Publish a Power BI Report to Your Website

With the security warnings understood, here’s how to create a public embed code for your report.

Step 1: Save and Publish Your Report to Power BI Service

Your journey starts in Power BI Desktop. Once your report is complete and ready for the world, you first need to publish it to the cloud-based Power BI Service.

1. Open your report in Power BI Desktop.
2. On the Home ribbon, click Publish.
3. You may be prompted to save your changes. If so, click Save.
4. Select a destination workspace. This could be "My Workspace" or any other workspace you have access to. Please note that publishing to the web from app workspaces might be restricted by your organization's admin.
5. Click Select. Once published, you'll see a success message with a link to open the report in Power BI Service.

Step 2: Generate the Public Embed Code

Now that your report is in Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com), you can generate the public link.

1. Navigate to the workspace where you published your report and open it.
2. With the report open, go to File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).
3. A dialog box will appear with a stern warning. It will remind you that you are about to publish confidential information publicly. This is your final chance to stop if the data is sensitive. Read it carefully.
4. Click Create embed code to confirm that you understand the risks.
5. Another dialog box will appear. Click Publish. This action is what generates your public link and <iframe> code.

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Step 3: Copy the Embed Code

After you click publish, a final window will appear with the code you need. You'll see two options:

• A shareable link that you can send directly to people.
• An HTML <iframe> code snippet that you can embed directly into a webpage. This is the one you need for your website.

Highlight the code under the heading, "Here's the HTML you can paste into your blog or website," and copy it to your clipboard. This is the snippet you'll add to your site's HTML.

How to Add the Power BI Report to Your Website

With the <iframe> code copied, the final step is to paste it into your website builder. An iframe is a standard HTML element that essentially creates a window on your page to display content from another source - in this case, your Power BI report.

The exact steps vary depending on your platform, but the principle is the same: find where you can add raw HTML or a custom code block and paste your code.

For WordPress:

1. Open the page or post where you want to embed the report.
2. In the block editor (Gutenberg), click the "+" icon to add a new block.
3. Search for and select the Custom HTML block.
4. Paste your copied <iframe> code into the block.
5. Save or Publish the page. You can preview it to see how the report looks.

For Shopify:

1. Navigate to a product description, page, or blog post where you want to add the report.
2. In the content editor, look for a button that looks like < > or is labeled "Show HTML."
3. Click this button to switch the editor from the visual view to the HTML code view.
4. Find the spot in the code where you want your report to appear and paste the <iframe> code.
5. Click "Save" and view the page to ensure it's displaying correctly.

For Squarespace, Wix, or other builders:

Look for an "Embed," "HTML," or "Code" block/widget. Drag it onto your page, paste your <iframe> snippet into the appropriate field, and save your changes. Most modern website builders offer a straightforward way to add custom HTML snippets.

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How to Manage or Delete Public Embed Codes

What happens if you publish a report and later realize it shouldn't be public? Or if you simply want to update it or take it down? You must manage your active embed codes within Power BI Service.

1. In Power BI Service, click the Settings gear icon in the top-right corner.
2. Go to Manage embed codes.
3. This page will list every single "Publish to web" embed code you have created. It tells you which workspace it came from and the report name.
4. To disable a report, find it in the list, click the ellipsis (…), and select Delete.
5. A confirmation prompt will appear. Once you confirm, the link will immediately become inactive. Anyone trying to view the embedded report on your website will see a message stating the content is unavailable.

Power BI Admins also have tenant-level control and can disable the "Publish to web" feature for the entire organization or specific groups, and they can review all public codes published across the company.

Final Thoughts

Using Power BI's "Publish to web" feature is a powerful way to share data stories with a broad audience without friction. The key is to be extremely mindful of the data you're sharing, as this method offers zero security and makes your report completely public.

At Graphed, we believe getting insights from your data should be simple and secure. Instead of spending hours in complex BI tools and managing risky public embed codes, you can connect your marketing and sales data sources in seconds. Then, you can use plain English to ask questions like, "Show me a dashboard of my marketing funnel performance," and we build the real-time dashboard for you instantly. Sharing is just as easy, giving you full control over who sees your data without the all-or-nothing approach of public embedding.