Image Gallery — Guide for Power BI administrators

A user in your organization tried to export a document from the ImageGallery visual and the download was blocked. This page explains which setting controls this, how to enable it safely (even for a single team only), and exactly what it does. Estimated time: 2 minutes.

What is happening

ImageGallery is a Power BI visual that displays image galleries and exports them as PDF reports. To deliver the file to the user it relies on Microsoft's official download API (downloadService) — the same standard mechanism used by the leading commercial visuals on the market (Excel exporters, PDF exporters, etc.). Microsoft protects that API with a tenant-wide setting that is disabled by default in many organizations. While it is disabled, Power BI shows a "Download unavailable" message and no custom visual can deliver files.

How to enable it

1. Open the admin portal: app.powerbi.com → gear icon ⚙ → Admin portal.
2. Go to Tenant settings and find the "Power BI visuals" section.
3. Locate "Allow downloads from custom visuals" and switch it to Enabled.
4. Save with Apply. The change takes about 10–15 minutes to propagate; Power BI Desktop users need to restart the application.

Recommended: scope it to a security group

You do not have to enable it for the whole organization. In the same setting, choose "Specific security groups" and apply it to a group (for example PBI-Export-Visuals) containing the people who need to export. Everyone else remains exactly as before.

What this setting allows — and what it does not

• It only affects user-initiated downloads from a visual, with a confirmation prompt from Power BI the first time.
• It does not let visuals send data out, access other reports, or act without user interaction.
• File types are restricted by Microsoft (PDF, Excel, CSV and similar) and the maximum size is 30 MB per file.
• You can revert it at any time from the same place.

Frequently asked questions

Is this visual safe? ImageGallery does not send report data to external servers for local export: the PDF is generated entirely in the user's browser. Only if the server hosting the images does not allow direct access (CORS) may the image URLs be relayed through our service on the Cloudflare network (EU data residency, no logging or permanent storage, cache max. 24 h). Organizations can replace that service with their own proxy from the visual's settings, or avoid it altogether by enabling CORS on their image storage. Full details in our privacy policy. Why do images show in the report but the export says "Image not exportable"? Displaying an image requires no special permissions; embedding it in a PDF requires the image server to send the CORS header (Access-Control-Allow-Origin). If you use Azure Blob Storage or Amazon S3, it is a configuration option of the service. If the images live in SharePoint or OneDrive behind authentication, export is not possible (a platform limitation that affects every visual on the market) — we recommend hosting images intended for export in Azure Blob Storage with CORS enabled. Do I need to do anything else for licensed users? No. Licenses are managed from the Microsoft 365 admin center, like any Microsoft subscription. This tenant setting is independent of licensing.

Questions?

Write to support@invenia.es and we will help you with the configuration.