There are a few important considerations and limitations associated with downloading (exporting) a.pbix file from Power BI service. To download the file, you must have edit access to the report; The report must have been created using Power BI Desktop and been published to the Power BI service, or the.pbix must have been uploaded to the service.

Microsoft Power BI is a prime example of Redmond's stellar offerings in the (BI) space. When a platform is this strong, however, the product must match expectations, and Microsoft Power BI does exactly that. Microsoft Power BI does a fantastic job of combining power analytics with a user-friendly user interface (UI) and remarkable capabilities. Customers have the choice between a limited free version or the Professional version (which begins at $9.99 per user per month). The free service is designed for individual users and offers just 1 gigabyte (GB) of storage along with daily refresh cycles. Enterprises will want to go with the Professional version, which has more data storage (10 GB), faster data fresh cycles (hourly), streaming data consumption (1 million rows per hour compared to the 10,000 rows per hour offered in the free tier), and collaboration features. It's one of the best BI tools on the market and is one of our three Editors' Choice recipients, along with.

Today, Microsoft Power BI has 74 data connectors and it's adding more at a regular clip, which is a standout number even when compared to the more mature competition. Data connectors let you point your BI tool at a particular app or data set and incorporate that data into your queries. So, for example, Microsoft Power BI includes a connector for, which is an app, as well as a connector for. Enabling both of those means you would be able to form singular queries aimed at each app or more complex queries that would source data from both apps simultaneously. Microsoft does a good job of making such queries easy to do even for general users.

Even with this focus on ease of use, I felt it was a bit weird that I needed to use the desktop tool for data prep and then move to the web user UI to publish. This might be good for data scientists who want to work with truly humongous data sets directly on the Microsoft Power BI service, but business analysts and everyday users are going to want to do all of the data prep work in the desktop tool. If you opt to use Microsoft Power BI, then go ahead and set up both the desktop and the web service. The folks at Microsoft tell me that, at least for now, most users prefer the desktop software over the web tool anyway. Tableau told me that same story. According to both vendors, most business analysts find it simpler and faster to use a desktop tool when most of the data they're working with is local. Then again, that's coming from two vendors whose traditional model has long been desktop-installed software.

Photoshop like app for mac. Look at long-time web-oriented tools such as, for example, and your perspective may change. Personally, I don't like downloading a bunch of stuff (data or desktop tools) to my devices and prefer robust cloud tools.

I think many business analysts will feel the same way, especially in the near future. In any case, while individual preferences vary, there's no doubt that the current desktop tool is more robust for data prep work. In July, Microsoft announced, including the ability to integrate Big Data directly in the Power BI web service. Users can now share data across Power BI models, dashboard and boards. This capability ensures that data can be easily reused.

In addition, Microsoft said that it would unify access to data between Power BI and, a data lake that lets enterprises run large-scale analytics workloads in the cloud. The UI is highly intuitive and will be familiar to Microsoft users. That makes sense considering Microsoft Power BI was originally an add-on to other Microsoft products. The familiarity and otherwise intuitive design means the learning curve is very short, even for beginning business analysts. Getting Started Loading data is a simple affair. I downloaded CSV files from a account (the same test data I used to review all of the products in this BI category), and then simply selected the CSV/text connector under the Data Source button.