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willnic
Advocate II
Advocate II

PBIX file corrupted

I worked on a model last week where I added some calculations. Now when I try to open it up I get the error message saying "Unable to Open Document" with the file past listed, saying it is "corrupt or not a valid report file."

 

The only changes I made to the file were calculations and everything was working. I can even see that it saved properly based on the timestamp on the file.

 

I really don't want to have to rebuild this model -- any way I can save this?

49 REPLIES 49

I should also note that I logged a ticket and they have been investigating my file but can't find a solution to resurrect it. I ended up having to rebuild.

Greg_Deckler
Super User
Super User

You can try copying it and changing the file extension to ".zip" and you might be able to salvage something. I've only run into file corruption once when switching back and forth between Excel 2016 and Excel 2013. Spent quite a bit of time rebuilding that one...


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DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...

Thanks for the idea -- tried that with no luck, I still get the same error message unfortunately.

I guess I should have probably elaborated on the idea a little. The thought was that you could copy the first file to a zip file. Create another new PBIX file, rename that to a zip. Go into the first zip and copy out certain files like "Data Model" and paste into your new zip folder, rename the zip to pbix and see if you can open it.

 

Long shot, but might work.


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Mastering Power BI 2nd Edition

DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...

Thanks for clarifying. I tried your solution, but it appears that the corrupt PBIX file (the first zip file I created) does not have the underlying files in it. When I zip the folder and try to access, it says "Windows cannot open the folder" then has the file name saying it is "invalid." I tried this with my other PBIX files that are working fine, and when I do the same procedure and open the zip file, I see a Report subfolder, along with the files like DataMashup, DataModel, DiagramState,Metadata, etc. I am wondering if this is part of the problem? 

 

The weird thing is the PBIX file shows that it is 30 MB so clearly the data is there -- but it's like the file lost its underlying components?

Seems like it is truly corrupted at the file structural level. So, all of the data is there but something in the structure of the file has become corrupted such that it essentially is no longer a valid "zip" file. So when trying to view it via native zip tools, it is not really a valid file. Wonder if it happened during file compression, something went haywire.

 

Sorry man, you're probably out of luck unless you can find some sort of "zip repair" tool that will work on it. There are some available, Bing "zip repair tool" and you will get hits from CNET and PC World.


@ me in replies or I'll lose your thread!!!
Instead of a Kudo, please vote for this idea
Become an expert!: Enterprise DNA
External Tools: MSHGQM
YouTube Channel!: Microsoft Hates Greg
Latest book!:
Mastering Power BI 2nd Edition

DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...

Got it -- thanks so much for your advice!

The same thing just happened with my team. We added a calculation, saved and closed the file and then were no longer able to use it as it says it is corrupt. This appears to be a bug.

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