Azure blob storage - Show deleted Blobs

[DataLife321]

Hi All, 

Has anyone connected to an Azure Storage Blob before in Power BI and managed to retrieve a list of the 'Show deleted blobs' as well as the active files ? 

If you have this would be great to know as I need to create a report based off a container which shows the Status of the active files and would like to filter to ones that may of been deleted aswell. 

thanks 

[Anonymous]

Hi @DataLife321 ,

To achieve the goal, you need to ensure that the soft delete feature is enabled on Azure Blob Storage. This feature keeps deleted Blobs (and their versions and snapshots) for a period of time so that they can be restored when needed. Once soft deletion is enabled, these deleted Blobs can be viewed and managed using the Azure portal. see the Azure documentation for detailed steps on enabling and managing soft deletion:

Soft delete for blobs - Azure Storage | Microsoft Learn

However, to integrate this data into Power BI, the process is not as simple, as Power BI's Azure Blob Storage native connector does not directly support filtering or displaying deleted blobs. the following are suggested ways to work around this limitation:

1. You might consider creating an Azure function that accesses the Blob Storage, lists the active Blobs and deleted Blobs, and then outputs this data to a location accessible to Power BI, such as an Azure SQL database or other Blob container set up for this purpose.
2. Once you have the Azure function set up and running, you can use Power BI to connect to the database or Blob container from which the function exports Blob data. From there, you can import the data into Power BI and create reports, including filtering on active and deleted blobs as needed.

Best Regards,

Ada Wang

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