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Learn To Love Paginated Reports
Paginated reports in a day.
The Unfashionable Corner Of Power BI
Nobody gets excited about paginated reports. They're the unglamorous corner of the Power BI ecosystem - the bit that's really just SQL Server Reporting Services wearing a new badge.
Despite the lack of glamour, they solve real recurring business needs: pixel-perfect PDFs, large data extracts beyond Power BI's 150,000-row limit, invoices, statements, printable meeting materials. Interactive dashboards can't fulfil any of that, and building paginated reports properly needs specific knowledge that's rarely found on a data team.
What It Looks Like When Nobody Can Build Them
Without the skill in-house, teams fall back on workarounds like:
- Monthly manual screenshot exports, stitched into a PDF by hand.
- Power BI reports contorted into something vaguely printable.
- Stakeholders copying visuals into PowerPoint one by one.
- Running the same report over and over with different filters just to get around export limits.
- Building what should be an operational document in a tool that was never meant for it.
A Day In The Labs
Learn to Love Paginated Reports is a hands-on, full-day course built around a single case study. By the end of it, a team will know:
- When to reach for a paginated report instead of a standard Power BI report.
- How Datasources, Datasets and DAX queries fit together.
- Parameter handling, including date pickers and sensible defaults.
- Print-friendly formatting - page sizing, margins, headers.
- Getting totals right, including non-additive measures.
- Report branding and polish.
- Publishing and sharing through Power BI Service.
Teams walk away able to build, format and publish production-quality paginated reports that hold up through printing and Excel export - not just on screen.
Full Agenda
Seven modules, working through a single case study end to end:
The What And Why
- Paginated reports, defined, and their SSRS heritage
- When to choose paginated over standard Power BI
- Real-world uses - invoices, statements, operational extracts, compliance reporting
Three Ways To Build
- Power BI Service
- Report Builder
- Hybrid approaches, and where Service-only falls short
Lab 1: Building The First Report
- Connecting to Power BI semantic models
- Datasources, datasets, query designer
- Parameters - dropdowns, date pickers, defaults, gotchas
- Print-friendly layouts, totals, styling, headers, footers
- Publishing to Power BI Service
Lab 2: Working With Matrices
- Cross-tab layouts with row and column groups
- Hierarchies, sub-totals, grand totals
- Custom code for alternating row formatting
- Managing whitespace and phantom pages
- Interactive expand/collapse
Lab 3: Working With Charts
- Donut and bar charts with branded custom palettes
- Titles, subtitles, data labels, sorting
- Laying out multiple visuals on one page
Honourable Mentions
- Sorting and grouping
- Page breaks
- Subreports
- Power BI embedding
Further Resources & Q&A
Time to dig into any leftover questions and point a team at further reading once the case study wraps up.
The Damage
How much will this training actually cost?
£449/ person / day
Excluding VAT
- Minimum 5 people (or a minimum fee of £2,245)
- Maximum 10 people - training works best with a targeted group, not a packed classroom
Delivered face to face wherever possible - attendees are more attentive and better able to interact with the instructor and each other. Pricing excludes travel expenses, venue hire and catering. Online delivery can be arranged on request. Not got a team of 5 to bring? Join the waitlist instead.
Just You, Not A Team Of Five?
This course runs for groups of 5-10. Join the waitlist and Johnny will get in touch once there's enough interest to run a session open to individuals.
Want A Team Booked In?
Share a few details below and Johnny will get back to you directly.
Ready To Get Your Team Booked In?
Team training gets everyone working from the same case study on day one.