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Subreports now available for Paginated Reports in Power BI

Headshot of article author Christopher Finlan

Picture of a subreport in Power BI

 

New Feature Friday returns for paginated reports!

Subreports have been one of the features most closely associated with SQL Server Reporting Services reports through the years.  For those of you who aren’t sure what subreports are, they are a report item that displays another report inside the body of a main report.  Today, we are thrilled to announce we have added support for subreports for paginated reports in the Power BI service.

 

To get started using subreports, make sure you download the latest version of Power BI Report Builder.  You’ll see that the subreports button is now enabled in the  toolbar if you are using the latest version.

Pic of subreports button enabled in the toolbar

 

To add a subreport, simply add that element to your report surface and select a report from the Power BI service to use as a subreport from a workspace.

You’ll probably want to create any report you want to use as a subreport first and publish it to the service prior to creating your main report.  When I was creating the sample report for this blogpost, I found it helpful to have two sessions of Power BI Report Builder open and active, one where I was creating the main report, and another with the subreport that had been published that I could edit in real time.

Both your main report and subreport(s) will need to all be published to the same workspace.  When you deploy the main report via an app, you may choose to hide the subreports from the navigation and they will still work in the main report without issue.

There is much to learn about with subreports, and we’ve provided detailed documentation for you to review – Link
 

Paginated Reports in a Day Instructor Kit now available

We’ve now made all the instructor materials available from our very popular PRIAD course available so it can be delivered by partners and internally at organizations looking to train folks on how to get started.  You can grab all this material from the link – Download

We look forward to your feedback in the comments below, and don’t forget about the Microsoft Business Applications Summit happening virtually next week.