Excel Power Query Cache Folder

[darentengmfs]

Hello

I have a few Task Scheduler tasks that opens up some excel files and refreshing their queries every few hours every day. There is a folder in the machine that stores these cache files, path below

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerQuery

Some of these caches go back several months. The questions I have are:

1. What is the impact of my deleting these cache files periodically?
2. Will it increase the time for my query to refresh if I delete them? 
3. If it will increase the refresh time, how far back should I keep the cache files? e.g. Cache files from 10 days should be ok to delete

Thanks!

Daren

[BA_Pete · Accepted solution]

Hi @darentengmfs ,

These caches are for the data preview in Power Query. Removing these will have no effect on your query refresh speeds, as refreshes are performed Wipe > Reload > Transform, no cache read.

If you delete these caches, it will make the PQ preview window load slower until new cache files for frequently-viewed queries are created again.

If you want to control the size of these cache files on your machine, then you can adjust the size-on-disk setting here:

If you hover over the info (i) icon I've circled, there's an explanation available.

As you can see, I'm happy to allocate ~20GB for these caches as I have plenty of HDD space, and I like my frequently-used query previews to load fast.

Pete

[v-jingzhang · Accepted solution]

Hi @darentengmfs 

Do you need those old cache files? Since you are refreshing these queries every day, if you don't need the cache data in previous days, i think it is ok to remove those old cache files. Every time when it refreshes the queries, it will connect to the data sources to query data and load them into files instead of querying data from the cache. 

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing
If this post helps, please Accept it as Solution to help other members find it.

[BA_Pete · Accepted solution]

Hi @darentengmfs ,

These caches are for the data preview in Power Query. Removing these will have no effect on your query refresh speeds, as refreshes are performed Wipe > Reload > Transform, no cache read.

If you delete these caches, it will make the PQ preview window load slower until new cache files for frequently-viewed queries are created again.

If you want to control the size of these cache files on your machine, then you can adjust the size-on-disk setting here:

If you hover over the info (i) icon I've circled, there's an explanation available.

As you can see, I'm happy to allocate ~20GB for these caches as I have plenty of HDD space, and I like my frequently-used query previews to load fast.

Pete