Forum Discussion
Delete all data for measure cleanup
Hi everyone,
Situation:
I am new to PowerBI and got a really huge dashboard file from a colleague who left.
The file has a lot of measures from which I suspect most are not in use anymore and I want to clean it up.
In the forum I already found topics about tools like "Power BI Helper", "DAX Studio", etc., but these are external tools and I cannot install them on my work PC.
What I want:
Therefore I want to delete all the data within the dashboard file (data safety reasons) and transfer it to another PC where I use one of the tools to get rid of unused measures.
How can I delete all the data, but keep the structure of the report to clean it up?
And does my approach makes sense at all? 😄
Kind regards,
Max
Hi Max_25
The right way to do this is to export your report as a Power BI Template (.pbit).
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In Power BI Desktop, go to File > Export > Power BI template.
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A .pbit file keeps all the report structure (pages, visuals, relationships, measures, model) but removes all the loaded data.
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When you open the .pbit on another PC, it will prompt for data connections, and you can then run tools like Power BI Helper or DAX Studio there to clean up unused measures.
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5 Replies
- Shahid12523
Community Champion
Use Power Query Editor to remove all rows from every table—this keeps columns, measures, and report structure intact but deletes the data. Then save the file and transfer it to another PC to clean up unused measures safely.
- rohit1991
Super User
Hi Max_25
The right way to do this is to export your report as a Power BI Template (.pbit).
-
In Power BI Desktop, go to File > Export > Power BI template.
-
A .pbit file keeps all the report structure (pages, visuals, relationships, measures, model) but removes all the loaded data.
-
When you open the .pbit on another PC, it will prompt for data connections, and you can then run tools like Power BI Helper or DAX Studio there to clean up unused measures.
-
- V-yubandi-msft
Community Support
- Max_25Regular Visitor
Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I decided to go with the Template file (.pbit) and it works perfectly 🙂