Copy Report Layout between two PBIX files

This trick was demonstrated in my last session at RADACAD channel: https://youtu.be/xoR-2NjZCCk?t=977

The idea is basically to copy the entire report (pages, filters, bookmarks,…) between two different Power BI Desktop files (.pbix).

Why this is useful? Imagine you are building a new Power BI Report and you need to reuse the entire layout from another report not only the visuals but also the layout, pages, themes, custom visuals,… Yes the dataset will be different and the report visuals will stay in an error state like this:

Yes it seems broken , but the entire layout is there and is easy to change the field of a visual to a new field of the target dataset by drag & drop a new field

To do this you just need to follow these simple steps:

• Unzip the source and target PBIX files using a tool like 7zip

Copy the \Report folder from the “Source Report” extracted folder into the “Target Report” folder and replace the existing one:

In the end in the “Target Report” folder you just need to:

• Delete the “SecurityBindings” file
• Select all the files and create a zip file (right-click and select “Send-To” -> “Compressed (zipped) folder”)
• Change the extension from .zip to .pbix
• Open the new pbix with Power BI Desktop