Forum Discussion
Do hidden visuals impact performance
Hi Anonymous ,
By Default all queries in Power Query will be loaded into the Power BI model, and consume memory. Even when you hide visual ,the query will still consume the memory and affect performance. The best approach is to disable loading in Query Editor. select the query and right click, Click on the Enable Load to disable it, then click "Apply &Close", the query won't been seem in Report View, Data View, and Model View.
Disabling Load doesn’t mean the query won’t be refreshed, it only means the query won’t be loaded into the memory. When you click on Refresh model in Power BI, or when a scheduled refresh happens even queries marked as Disable Load will be refreshed, but their data will be used as intermediate source for other queries instead of loading directly into the model.
Best Regards,
Amy
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Hello Anonymous ,
I believe your question was answered from the data collection or data prep point of view, but it wasn't addressed from the visuals rendering point of view. I had the same question as you did and found that hidden visuals do not impact performance. At least doesn't seem like they do in Power BI Desktop and I assume the same applies in Power BI Service. Hope my solution below helps you test it for yourself and don't forget to flag as a solution if it works for you.
In my case, I have two matrix visuals. Depending on which report bookmarks the user selects, one visual will be hidden while the other one is shown. The quota source for both visuals is the same, so nothing to do from the Query Editor/Power Query side. The difference between the two matrix visuals is simply the list of fields that get displayed.
To review the performance impact of your visuals, you can open the Performance analyzer (View > Performance analyzer). It's located in the 'Show panes' grouping of the ribbon in Power BI Desktop. Once it opens, click on Start recording and you can change pages, refresh visuals, or (like in my case) click on the different bookmarks to have the Performance analyzer review the impact of refreshing each visual in the active page. In the results of the analyzer you will see that the hidden visuals do not impact performance.
Here's more information on the Performance analyzer:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-performance-analyzer
Hope I answered your question.
Thanks Advocate IV
i was wondering the same, i have gruops of visuals hidden, that shows up with bookmarks. its great the dont affect performance of rendering a page report.