Print-Ready Reports in Power BI: Why Paginated Reports Matter

Paginated Reports are a type of report in the Microsoft reporting ecosystem designed to display data in a fixed, printable format. They are especially useful when you need to generate reports that are:
- Printable or PDF-friendly
- Pixel-perfect, meaning the layout doesn’t change no matter the screen size
- Multi-page reports, like invoices, statements, or regulatory documents
- Capable of handling large amounts of tabular data efficiently
While Power BI reports are interactive and dynamic (great for dashboards and visual exploration), Paginated Reports are better suited for scenarios where the report format and layout need to remain consistent.
- Interactive dashboards and reports
- Users can click, filter, and slice data in real time
- Built with modern visuals and storytelling in mind
- Ideal for quick decision-making and exploration
- Can be embedded in websites, apps, Teams, and more
- Automatically adjusts to screen size (responsive)
- Monthly revenue trends
- Top-performing products
- Interactive filters by region, category, or salesperson
- Fixed layout (no responsive resizing)
- Great for printing, exporting to PDF/Excel
- Supports very large tables (thousands of rows)
- Best suited for formal documents and legal reports
- Built using Power BI Report Builder or SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
- Detailed product breakdown
- Totals at the bottom
- Headers and footers on every page
- Both are part of the Power BI ecosystem
- Both can be published to the Power BI Service
- They can use the same datasets from the Power BI data model or Power BI Datamarts
- Complementary, not competing — you can use both in a single solution

When to Use Each?
- Use Standard Power BI for dashboards, storytelling, real-time analytics.
- Use Paginated Reports for structured, print-friendly reports and formal documents.
Published on:
Learn moreRelated posts
FLIP Patient Card in Power BI ✌🏼
Power Platform Data Export: Track Power Apps Usage with Azure Data Lake and Power BI
With the Power Platform admin center, you can export Power Platform inventory and usage data directly into Azure Data Lake Storage for advance...
Let Your Dashboards Speak: Power BI Smart Narrative Explained
Smart Narrative in Power BI is a feature introduced by Microsoft to automatically generate dynamic, natural-language summaries of data visuali...
Unlock the Power of Copilot in Power BI! 🚀
Documenting Power BI Semantic Models With Fabric Data Agents
AI is meant to help us automate boring tasks, and what could be more boring than creating documentation for your Power BI semantic models? It&...
From Data to Dashboard: Visuals That Matter Most in Power BI
Humans are visual learners—more than 50% of the brain is involved in visual processing. Good visuals help with pattern recognition, memory ret...