Hi All,

Microsoft Power BI Team is keep on releasing amazing features for Power BI Service as well as Power BI On-Premise version (i.e. Report BI Report Server). And obviously we would like to try them all 🙂

If you notice, Power BI Report files created in bother authoring tools (Power BI Desktop as well as Power BI Desktop for Report Server) have the same file extension (which is understood). But when you double click the pbix file and you want that to open in its correct authoring tool then you need to remember 1 rule before double clicking it.

Simple rule: When the same machine has Power BI Desktop as well as Power BI Desktop for Report Server installed -> Then you need to remember which was the last tool installed on machine. Because it will by default take preference/choice when you open any pbix file directly by double clicking.

What if I don’t remember or keep track of which version of Power BI I have installed last (Because Microsoft is keep releasing new versions every month :)). Well, in that case you can do following in order to avoid confusion:

1. If you want to work with Power BI Report files which were developed in Power BI Desktop -> then open the Power BI Desktop Tool first and select your file. Simple 🙂

Note: The Power BI Desktop version for the Power BI service doesn’t have the month and year in the title bar.

2. Same way, to work with Power BI Report files which were developed for Power BI Report Server -> You jump into Web Portal (ideally it looks like: http://machine_name/Reports) -> Click on your Report and Edit in Power BI Desktop. (below screen-shot shows where you can get the Power BI Desktop for Report Server easily)

Find out more details here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/install-powerbi-desktop

Thanks, Khilit