Rendering external images in Paginated reports published to the Power BI service

[pwmather]

Hello,

It is possible to have external images render in a paginated report in a premium workspace in the Power BI service using a URL to the image? The images in question are stored in a SharePoint Online site collection. The data in the report is from an Azure SQL database, the Image field in the dataset in Power BI Report Builder just contains the URL to the image stored in SharePoint Online. I can get images stored in a public website to render fine in the report, just not SharePoint Online. The user running the report in the Power BI Service has access to SharePoint Online, in the same browser session (different browser tab) the image URLs render from SharePoint Online but when running the report it just shows "Unable to load image". Click the "Show technical details" does not do anything:

Any suggestions?

Many thanks

Paul

[pmichalc]

Oh, okay, I have a problem because I can't set content-type in Azure Blob Storage, so I've looked for another idea.

[mycwidms]

After some digging and trying few things, setting the image content type seemed to fix the issue. In my case I had to manually set content type of JPEG image to "image/jpeg". In my case images were saved to Azure blob storage without proper content type.

[mycwidms]

Hi, was there any resolution on this? I am able to load an image in regular power bi report but not in the power bi paginated one. Our image urls come from azure blob storage with an access token. Strange...

[v-janeyg-msft]

Hi, @pwmather 

You need to ensure that the url of the picture doesn't require access to log in. It is not recommended to use SharePoint, because in some cases it seems that even an anonymous connection can't be opened.

Did I answer your question ? Please mark my reply as solution. Thank you very much.
If not, please feel free to ask me.

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _ Janey

[collinq]

HI @pwmather ,

Does the image itself have a required permission on it?  if you go to SharePoint online, confirm that the image is shared with "no sign-in required" and/or that Power BI account has permissions (which I think you indicated that you do in your question - but perhaps you are using the Service account for refreshing and that does not have permissions?).

I have also seen this issue resolved for folks when they change the to "url" instead of "link" to the image location.  (Changing the Data Category on the field from Web URL to Image URL and vice-versa.)

There could also be an issue with the age of the SharePoint site - see this thread: Solved: URL Images Won't Display in PowerBI Online - Microsoft Power BI Community   Personally, I have never had to convert anything to Base64 but this is an idea....

[pwmather]

Hi @collinq,

Thank you for the reply, I think you might be referring to normal Power BI Desktop reports?

This is for a Power BI Report Builder paginated report, not a Power BI Desktop report. I can get the Images loading fine in normal Power BI Desktop reports - the non pagingated (SSRS) type reports.

Many thanks

Paul

[wesnhsuk]

Hi Paul,

did you ever get to the bottom of this? i have the same issue with a paginated report.

Wes

[pwmather]

Hello @wesnhsuk , 

Nope, I gave up as I don't think it is possible.

Paul

[mycwidms]

After some digging and trying few things, setting the image content type seemed to fix the issue. In my case I had to manually set content type of JPEG image to "image/jpeg". In my case images were saved to Azure blob storage without proper content type.

[pmichalc]

So your data type was set to Azure Blob Storgae as application/octet-stream? And you were helped by manually changing the type to image/jpeg? Unfortunately with me it does not work, the images still not working.

[mycwidms]

Hi, please see blob type and image type settings. Also, make sure the URL to the image works in the browser and auth token must be valid.