We are using on premise Power BI solution to give insights to analysts about company data and create fancy dashboards for management. We are publishing reports to Power BI Reporting Service. By default, end users can download reports using “Download” Button located at the right top of the portal.

Due to security concerns, we decided to disable/hide this “Download” button in Power BI Reporting Server. After a quick research, it turns out to be able to do that, you have to set the system property “ShowDownloadMenu ” to false. Cool, how can we do that?

According to below discussion, you can do this via Management Studio in SSRS 2017.

Disable Download buttons in Power BI Report Server

So, it looks pretty straight-forward. I listed steps below:

1. Open SSMS, choose “Reporting Services” for Server Type and connect to Reporting Service as shown in Figure 2. You may also use Web Portal/Service URL to connect to it.
2. Right-click on Servername in Object Explorer and click Properties.
3. Click “Advanced” Tab and Set “ShowDownloadMenu” to False.

Easy peasy, right? Not that easy if you fall to the same trap like me. That is the reason why I write this blog post.

Based on my experience, this sort of binary fields in SSMS GUI which manages server/database level settings always set with a Dropdown list. For instance, Recovery model, Auto-Shrink, Auto-Close, Compatibility Level and so on. When you select this setting fields, you see a little arrow at the end of the line to change this setting as in below screenshot, or you basically click two times on the setting and it will change its value.

I was trying to get the dropdown list to change it from true to False but it looked like a read-only field. Double click alsodidn’t work. I was searching on forums, trying to give more rights to my account. I even tried to connect with service account to see if it is able to change it. No luck.

FIX:

It took me half an hour to realize this field is not a Dropdown list, instead a simple text box which can be edited directly.  Seriously? How much effort needed to make it a list or changeable by double-clicking like it has been for ages? Poor design from SSMS team in my humble opinion, due to the fact that other settings are indeed dropdown list and has tiny arrow ON THE SAME GUI.