pbip fails (ungracefully) if sidecar files exceed 256 char path limit

[ross_holmberg]

I've had this issue a few times now, and have found what was causing it, which I hope will help fix it (even if just by creating an appropriate message to the user) for others.

If one or more of the sidecar files (on which a pbip project relies) is stored in such a way as to exceed the 256 character file path limit, opening that project fails with no error message. The way this has presented itself to me is that Power BI will open, but the entire report is empty. I can see and interact with some of the objects in the model, but the visualisations view is completely blank. You can imagine I spent a good amount of time trouble-shooting this issue, and since the path of the pbip file itself doesn't look all that bad, the character limit never occured to me. I finally discovered that if I move the entire project to a location with a shorter path string, the project comes back to life, hence knowing now what the issue is.

I realise that the 256 character limit on file paths is an issue embedded into the Windows OS, so I think a reasonable fix here would be for Power BI to just recognise the issue and give the user a useful message to help them fix the problem. I imagine there might already be a message like this when you try to save a project, but if you manage to copy/move that project to a new location (as I did, through OneDrive fwiw), there's nothing in place to inform you of the issue when you try to open the project in Power BI.

[v-yetao1-msft]

Hi  @ross_holmberg 

Thanks for you to share your issue and workaround . It will help more users to solve their confusion .

Based on your questions and findings, I would suggest that you could propose an idea and comment there to improve this feature. It is a place for customers provide feedback about Microsoft Office products . What’s more, if a feedback is high voted there by other customers, it will be promising that Microsoft Product Team will take it into consideration when designing the next version in the future.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao