Recovery for Power BI brings back reports, dataflows, dashboards, deployment pipelines, and workspace access from any protected snapshot — either one item at a time or for a whole workspace.
What can be restored
- Reports
- Dataflows
- Dashboards (the dashboard itself; the tiles on it need to be added back manually afterward)
- Deployment pipelines (the pipeline structure is recreated, and workspace access is reapplied)
- Workspace users (access is reapplied)
What can't be restored
- Semantic models (datasets)
- Standard Power BI apps — Microsoft doesn't currently allow these to be published back through automated recovery, so they need to be republished manually from Power BI
- Fabric Org Apps — not currently backed up, so there's nothing to restore for these yet
How to restore a single item
- Open the item and restore it directly from its snapshot history.
How to restore a whole workspace
- Select Workspaces from the top menu, then open the workspace you want to restore.
- On its page, select the backup point you want to restore from in the Backup points list.
- Select Restore workspace to open the restore steps.
- On the Destination step, choose Create new workspace or Use existing workspace. If you're creating a new one, type its name into New workspace name. Select Continue.
- On the Content step, choose which content to bring back — PBIX reports, Dashboards, Dataflows, Deployment pipelines, and/or Workspace users. Select Continue.
- On the Review and restore step, check the summary of your choices, then set what should happen if a report or dataflow name already exists at the destination: stop without overwriting (the default), create a copy with a unique name, or overwrite the existing one.
- Confirm you've reviewed everything by checking the box, then select Restore now.
- Track progress from the task list until the restore completes.
Good to know
- Restoring a dashboard brings back the dashboard itself, but not the tiles on it — each tile is a chart pinned in from a report, so after a restore the dashboard will be empty and those charts need to be re-pinned from their reports by hand.
- Standard Power BI apps can't be republished through automated recovery and need to be republished manually.
Restoring a single item from the Objects list
Below the workspace restore steps, you'll see a list titled "Objects in this snapshot" — every item captured in that backup point, browsable one by one. This is a separate way to restore, not a continuation of the workspace steps above it: use it when you only need to bring back one specific item rather than a whole bundle of content.
Selecting an item here gives you two options:
- Download PBIX — saves a copy of the report file straight to your computer. This doesn't restore anything into Power BI; it just gives you the file itself. Available any time, regardless of whether you're also doing a workspace restore.
- Restore report — restores that one item on its own. Selecting it opens its own small destination and name-conflict choice (the same kind of options as the workspace steps, just for this single item), followed by its own confirmation before it runs. It's entirely independent of the workspace restore steps above — using it doesn't require, and isn't required by, clicking Restore now.
Use the workspace steps when you want to bring back several types of content together in one action. Use Restore report when you just need one item back on its own.