Exporting a Power BI report to PowerPoint is a good way of integrating these two tools together. The analytical power of Power BI combined with the commentary and presentation features of PowerPoint enables you to present your reports differently. You can export almost any Power BI report (limitations mentioned in this post) to PowerPoint, and then enhance the presentation of that from there. Exporting to PowerPoint, however, has some limitations which you need to be aware of before working with it. In this post, you will learn everything about export to PowerPoint feature if you want to learn more about Power BI, read Power BI book from Rookie to Rock Star.

How Export to PowerPoint works

This feature only works for reports at the moment. On top of the report, you can simply click on File option and select Export to PowerPoint. Note that this feature is still in preview mode at the time of writing this post, and it may be subject to changes.

Export to PowerPoint works very simple, and download a PPTX file for you. The file will include all pages of the report, plus a summary page. The summary page will include the name of the report, a link to the report, the time of refresh for the dataset, and the download time of the report.

The “downloaded at” time will be the time of the computer that the export to PowerPoint kicked off from there.

Visualizations on a page will be all exported as a big screenshot of each page.

Each report page will be a slide in PowerPoint, Not interactive, however, just screenshots. It means you cannot click on a visual or slicer and interact with it like a normal Power BI report.

What is the Main Advantage of Export to PowerPoint?

The main benefit of export to PowerPoint is getting the great features from both products: Commentary and presentation features of PowerPoint, combined with analytical and reporting feature of Power BI. After exporting to PowerPoint you can make changes in the presentation of slides as you want.

Limitations and Important Things to Know

Export to PowerPoint is a new feature and it has some limitations. Here is a list of limitations at the time of writing this post.

Number of Pages; Not more than 15

You cannot export to PowerPoint if you have more than 15 report pages. You will get an error such as below;

Custom Visuals: Only Certified Are supported

Some of the custom visuals won’t be shown after exporting to PowerPoint, and some of them will have a weird behavior after export to PowerPoint, like the screenshot below;

Certified custom visuals are supported fully: Example; Infographic Designer

List of all certified custom visuals are here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/power-bi-custom-visuals-certified

ArcGIS is not supported

ArcGIS custom visuals are not supported at the time of writing this post.

R Visuals are not currently supported

Export to PowerPoint can be disabled or limited

In Tenant Settings, the ability to Export to PowerPoint can be disabled or limited to a group of people

Language Setting in Power BI

When you export to PowerPoint, it will use the default language settings in Power BI. If you want to change it, go to Power BI service, Settings, and again Settings, then Language configuration and apply the change you want.

Not for people outside of your organization

If you share the report/dashboard with someone outside of your organization, they cannot use the export to PowerPoint feature.

This feature is still in PREVIEW mode

The feature is still in preview mode, and subject to changes.

Summary

This was a very quick post about export to PowerPoint feature of Power BI. The export to PowerPoint brings two products together; Power BI and PowerPoint. The result of the combination of the two products is the analytical power of Power BI combined with presentation features of PowerPoint. However, the export to PowerPoint is still in preview mode, and have some limitations. in the comments below please let me know if you have any questions.

Reza Rad

Trainer, Consultant, Mentor

Reza Rad is a Microsoft Regional Director, an Author, Trainer, Speaker and Consultant. He has a BSc in Computer engineering; he has more than 20 years’ experience in data analysis, BI, databases, programming, and development mostly on Microsoft technologies. He is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for 12 continuous years (from 2011 till now) for his dedication in Microsoft BI. Reza is an active blogger and co-founder of RADACAD. Reza is also co-founder and co-organizer of Difinity conference in New Zealand, Power BI Summit, and Data Insight Summit.
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.