Forum Discussion
How to Edit or Download a Large Semantic Model (Incremental Refresh Enabled)
Hi Community,
I have a Power BI dataset published in the service that is enabled with Large Semantic Model Storage Format and Incremental Refresh.
When I try to download the PBIX from the Service, I get the error:
"This file can't be downloaded yet."
I understand this is by design for large models, but my challenge is that I need to edit the model because one of the tables stores data in JSON format, and I need to make updates.
Questions:
- Is there any way to temporarily disable Large Semantic Model Storage Format, download the PBIX, make changes, and then re-enable it?
- If I instead re-publish from a local PBIX, will that overwrite and break the existing dataset (which is being used actively in reports)?
- What is the best practice for making structural changes to datasets that are already in Large Model format with incremental refresh enabled?
The goal is to make sure I can edit the model without disrupting the existing reports and usage.
Any guidance from people who have faced this would be very helpful.
Thanks in advance!
- You can't download a PBIX once Large Model + Incremental Refresh is enabled—it's by design.
- You can't disable Large Model format temporarily.
- Re-publishing a local PBIX will overwrite the dataset and may break connected reports.
- Best practice: Keep a local PBIX as your source of truth, use XMLA endpoint or deployment pipelines to make safe edits.
- For JSON table edits, stage and flatten locally before publishing.
2 Replies
- You can't download a PBIX once Large Model + Incremental Refresh is enabled—it's by design.
- You can't disable Large Model format temporarily.
- Re-publishing a local PBIX will overwrite the dataset and may break connected reports.
- Best practice: Keep a local PBIX as your source of truth, use XMLA endpoint or deployment pipelines to make safe edits.
- For JSON table edits, stage and flatten locally before publishing.Thank you, Shahed. The issue I’m facing now is this: as you mentioned, I opened the Semantic Model in Tabular Editor via the XMLA endpoint, which is correct. However, when I try to modify any queries, everything appears disabled—such as the source, and source type.
How would you suggest making changes in this scenario? thanks
