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How to Share Personal Bookmarks in Power BI

Cody Schneider•

Power BI’s personal bookmarks are a fantastic way to save a specific report view for yourself, capturing the exact filters, slicers, and drill-downs that matter to you. But what happens when that 'personal' view is so insightful that you need to share it with a colleague? This is where many users hit a wall, as Power BI doesn't offer a direct "share personal bookmark" button.

This tutorial will show you how to effectively share your customized report views. We'll cover everything from the quick and easy way to send a link to a more permanent method for making your insights available to the whole team.

Personal vs. Report Bookmarks: What’s the Difference?

Before jumping into the "how," it's important to understand the two types of bookmarks in Power BI and why they behave differently.

Report Bookmarks

These are created by the report author or editor in Power BI Desktop. Think of them as the official, pre-defined views of the report that are saved directly into the PBIX file. When the report is published, these bookmarks are available for all report viewers to use. They are perfect for guiding users to specific insights, like a "Quarter-over-Quarter Growth" view or a "Top Performing Products" view.

  • Created by: Report author/editor in Power BI Desktop.

  • Availability: Available to everyone who can view the report.

  • Purpose: To create a curated, guided experience for all users.

Personal Bookmarks

These are created by individual report viewers directly in the Power BI service. You create them to save a report state that is meaningful only to you. For example, if you're a regional manager for California, you might set the "Region" filter to "California" and save it as a personal bookmark called "My California Sales View" so you don't have to re-apply that filter every time you open the report.

  • Created by: End-users (report viewers) in the Power BI service.

  • Availability: Only visible and accessible to the user who created it.

  • Purpose: To personalize the report experience without affecting other users.

The problem arises because personal bookmarks are, by design, tied exclusively to your user account. There is no built-in feature to export one and send it to someone else.

Method 1: The "Share with my Changes" Link (The Quick & Easy Way)

The fastest way to share your current filtered view with a colleague is not through the bookmarks pane at all, but through the "Share" feature. This method doesn't share the bookmark itself, but it shares a link to the report frozen in the exact state you configured.

This is the perfect solution for one-off discussions, like saying, "Hey, look at the strange numbers I'm seeing for our marketing spend in Texas last month."

Step-by-Step Instructions:

  1. Set Up Your View: In the Power BI report, apply all the necessary filters, slicer selections, sorts, and visual highlighting to get the report looking exactly the way you want to share it.

  2. Click the "Share" Button: In the top action bar of the report, click the "Share" button.

  3. Include Your Changes: A sharing dialog will appear. Find and check the box labeled "Include my changes." This is the most crucial step. A sub-option for "Link to your selection" may also appear, which you should keep checked.

  4. Copy and Send: You can then either send the report directly to colleagues from this dialog or click "Copy Link" to get a shareable URL. Paste this link into an email, Microsoft Teams chat, or any other collaboration tool.

When your colleague opens the link, the report will load with all of your selections pre-applied. It’s a perfect snapshot of your insight at that moment.

Limitation: Your teammate receives the view, not a reusable bookmark. They can't save this incoming state as their own permanent personal bookmark. They would see your filters and have to save it as a new personal bookmark of their own if they wanted to come back to it later.

Method 2: Convert a Personal View into a Report Bookmark (The Permanent Solution)

If you've created a personal view that is so valuable that the entire team needs regular access to it, the best approach is to "promote" it from a personal bookmark to an official report bookmark.

This method requires the help of someone with permission to edit the report - usually the person or team that manages the source .PBIX file. The process involves recreating your personal view in Power BI Desktop and saving it as a report bookmark.

Step-by-Step for the Report Author:

  1. Document the View: The user with the personal bookmark must clearly communicate all the settings to the report author. Taking screenshots of the Filters pane and the slicers is the most effective way to ensure nothing is missed.

  2. Open the Report in Power BI Desktop: The report author will open the master .PBIX file for the report.

  3. Recreate the View: The author will manually apply the exact same filters, slicer choices, sorting, and any other interactions to match the user's documented view perfectly.

  4. Open the Bookmarks Pane: Go to the View tab in the ribbon and ensure the Bookmarks pane is visible.

  5. Add a New Bookmark: With the report page in the desired state, click the "Add" button in the Bookmarks pane. A new bookmark will appear with a generic name like "Bookmark 1."

  6. Name the Bookmark: Double-click the bookmark and give it a clear, descriptive name that the whole team will understand (e.g., "Q4 EU Sales Performance - Retail").

  7. Check Bookmark Settings (Optional): Click the ellipsis (...) next to the bookmark name for more options. By default, it will capture changes to Data (filters), Display (visual highlights), and Current Page. For sharing specific filtered views, the default settings are usually correct.

  8. Save and Publish: Save the changes to the .PBIX file and republish it to the Power BI service, overwriting the existing report.

Once republished, your personal view is now a permanent report bookmark, easily accessible to anyone on the team through the Bookmarks pane.

Method 3: Share a View Using URL Filters (The Advanced Approach)

For those who are more technically inclined, you can manually construct a URL that loads the report with specific filters applied. This gives you precise control and is great for embedding custom views in other portals, like a SharePoint site or an internal wiki, without cluttering the report with dozens of formal bookmarks.

A Power BI URL filter looks like this:

?filter=TableName/FieldName eq 'Value'

You find your report’s base URL and simply add this filter parameter at the end.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

  1. Get the Base URL: Navigate to the report page you want to share in the Power BI Service and copy the URL from your browser's address bar.

  2. Identify Table and Field Names: This is the tricky part. You need to know the exact name of the table and field that you want to filter from the underlying data model. If you don't know them, you'll need to ask the report author.

  3. Construct the Filter: Let's say you want to filter the Sales table for a Region equal to 'North America'. Your filter string would be:?filter=Sales/Region eq 'North America'

  4. Combine and Share: Append this string to your base URL. If the URL already contains a question mark (?), use an ampersand (&) to add your filter instead:&filter=Sales/Region eq 'North America'

You can even stack multiple filters by using the "and" operator:

?filter=Sales/Region eq 'North America' and Products/Category eq 'Bikes'

Sharing these custom URLs gives your team direct access to pre-filtered data views without requiring any bookmark creation at all.

Final Thoughts

While you can't directly share a Power BI personal bookmark, you can easily share the insight it represents. For quick, ad-hoc collaboration, the "Share with my changes" feature is your best bet. For providing long-term, reusable views to your entire team, the best practice is to work with your report authors to promote your valuable personal views into official report bookmarks.

This process of coordinating with authors, editing .PBIX files, and republishing updates is precisely the kind of friction we created Graphed to eliminate. Instead of relying on technical users to make insights available, we allow anyone on the team to simply ask questions in plain English to build real-time, interactive dashboards. Sharing your analysis becomes as easy as sharing the prompt you used, letting your colleagues explore the data themselves without ever needing to worry about a bookmark system.