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Incremental Refresh deletion
Does the rolling window automatically remove old partitions during each refresh, or is this behavior dependent on specific conditions (Premium capacity, manual XMLA operations, etc.)? I've found conf...
Old partitions are automatically removed as part of incremental refresh, no manual intervention needed.
Power BI maintains a rolling window, not a static one. On each refresh, it:
- Refreshes the incremental range (e.g., last 3 days)
- Drops partitions that fall outside the archive window
Hello mrbelchi,
For your scenario (archive 5 years, incremental refresh 3 days, daily refresh), Power BI automatically deletes partitions older than the retention window during each refresh. On Sept 20, 2026, data from Sept 19, 2021 is removed because it is now outside the 5-year rolling window. The retention window moves forward with each refresh; no manual intervention or XMLA operations are required
Docs:
Configure incremental refresh and real-time data for Power BI semantic models
Thank you for the doc link 👍
