What will break if I remove the hidden LocalDateTables?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I wonder what will break when I "delete" the hidden LocalDateTables?

They seem to take up a lot of space (about 750 MBs in total), but I'm unsure what turning off Auto/Date Time will do like suggested here:

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2016/12/16/power-bi-model-size-bloat-and-auto-datetime-tables/

It is just quick measures based on time intelligence that will break, or will more things break?

[v-chuncz-msft · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous,

See Show dates as a hierarchy and take a look at this article.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

So I decided to make a copy of the original file and do a test.

I turned off the auto date/time under options and here is what happened.

The PBIX file shrunk from 150 to only 17 MB - quite a decrease!

All the calculated columns where I used a variance of the date value (like Dates[Date].[Year] or Dates[Date].[MonthNo]) broke with

the error message:

Luckily, this is pretty easy to solve by switching to the functions Year, Month etc. (like YEAR (Dates[Date]))

Nothing else seems to have broken. I will test further over the next week to see if the copy file starts to look or behave differently than the original one.

[v-chuncz-msft · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous,

See Show dates as a hierarchy and take a look at this article.