Saving As PDF vs Publish to Power BI

[pfarahani]

Hello, 

Simple question here is. What is the Difference between the Export to PDF and Publish to Power BI. Say that I want to send a Dashboard that I have created to a user, or that I want to save my document as a different format somewhere on my local drive. 

Thanks -

[d_gosbell · Accepted solution]

Save as PDF basically takes static screen shots and saves then in a PDF document. There is no data saved in the document, just pictures. Users can't change filters or interact with the dashboard in any way.

When you publish to Power BI the report and the data are uploaded to Powerbi.com you can possibly then setup scheduled refreshes to keep your data updated and anyone you share the report with can change filters and slicers and interact with the report. But to share in this way you need to have a pro license and the person you are sharing with must either also have a pro license (or the report needs to be published on a premium workspace)