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Disable export of underlying data

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Dan on 11 Nov 2017 05:31:44

We are using SSAS Tabular as our datasource and we have issues when users try to 'Export underlying data' from the Power BI Service. The query generated to SSAS when doing this seems to include every measure from the table which in some cases is 30+ measures and sometimes from multiple tables. The query never completes and consumes nearly all resources on the SSAS server.

We need to disable this option while still allowing export of summarized data.

Comments (37)
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Dan on 05 Jul 2020 23:39:51

RE: Disable export of underlying data

It seems the feature to disable this on a per-report basis has been removed. Please bring this feature back as soon as possible.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:32:13

RE: Disable export of underlying data

It Looks like "Test as Role" on the service doesn't actually work correctly for testing RLS on exporting data. It lets me download all the data, however when I had the actual user try downloading, they only got the rows they were supposed to get. (I did hide all the tables though after reading through the comments). So there's a bug with the "Test as Role" in emulating what happens with the Export Data feature.

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Dan on 05 Jul 2020 23:31:54

RE: Disable export of underlying data

It's been pointed out there is a new (?) feature for disabling the ability to export underlying data which is configurable on each report. If you go to the report list in Power BI Service, click the gear icon, the last setting is to control what type of data can be exported.

It would be great if this was a tenant wide setting as we have hundreds of reports to configure this option on and we need to remind our report authors to configure this on new reports however this is a good first step to get this under control.

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Anne Ani2705 on 05 Jul 2020 23:31:19

RE: Disable export of underlying data

Please remove the ability to extract underlying data, but maintain the possibility to export summarized data!
It's a huge problem in our business and I'm pretty chocked that this problem has been here for so long and it's not yet solved... :-(

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Topher60657 on 05 Jul 2020 23:31:06

RE: Disable export of underlying data

Also, I just shot an email to the Guy in a Cube team https://guyinacube.com/contact/

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Topher60657 on 05 Jul 2020 23:31:06

RE: Disable export of underlying data

While the 9/5/2018 solution may work, it means that you have to do all your content creation in the desktop application. You are not able to build your content in the Power BI service. I am not able to unhide/rehide tables in the Power BI service as I create content. As Tennant admins we need the ability to disable the export underlying data feature in the Power BI service.

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Eleonora on 05 Jul 2020 23:29:51

RE: Disable export of underlying data

The last comment from "Anonymous" (on 9/5) works. By hiding the tables in the model you can prevent people from downloading underlying data.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:29:05

RE: Disable export of underlying data

A way around this I have found is to set all tables and columns in the data model to "Hide". This stops any underlying data being exported

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:29:04

RE: Disable export of underlying data

This functionality needs to be enabled asap. We have switched off the export function for most of our users as they would be able to see the underlying data (some of which is sensitive).

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:27:40

RE: Disable export of underlying data

Please prevent exporting underlying data!!! That is the biggest problem in Power BI.