How to Get Power BI Metadata

Trying to find where a specific column is used or what a complex DAX measure actually does in a Power BI report can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Understanding your Power BI metadata - the data about your data - is the key to unlocking better report documentation, impact analysis, and easier maintenance. This tutorial will walk you through a few practical methods for getting the metadata you need, from simple clicks in Power BI Desktop to more powerful external tools.

What Exactly is Power BI Metadata?

Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly cover the "what." Metadata is simply data that describes other data. In the context of Power BI, this isn't the values in your tables (like "1,250 sales"), it's the information about the structure and elements of your report. This includes things like:

Table Names: The list of all tables in your data model (e.g., 'Sales', 'Customers', 'Calendar').
Column Names and Data Types: Every column in every table and whether it's a number, text, or date.
Relationships: How your tables are connected to each other (e.g., 'Sales'[CustomerID] is linked to 'Customers'[CustomerID]).
Measures and DAX Formulas: All your custom calculations, including their complete DAX code.
Report Pages and Visuals: The names of report pages and the types of visualizations used.
Data Sources: Where your data is coming from (e.g., an SQL server, an Excel file).
Refresh History: When the dataset was last updated.

Having access to this information is incredibly useful for documentation, troubleshooting, and understanding the impact of changes. If you need to change a column's name, metadata can help you quickly find every single measure and visual that will be affected.

Method 1: Using the Performance Analyzer in Power BI Desktop

The Performance Analyzer is a built-in tool that is primarily used for optimizing slow reports. However, a helpful side effect is that it exposes the DAX queries for each visual, giving you a peek into the metadata. This is a great starting point if you're just looking for the logic behind a specific chart.

When to use this method: You need to quickly see the DAX query generated by a single visual without using external tools.

How to Use It:

Open your report in Power BI Desktop.
Go to the View tab in the ribbon.
Click the Performance Analyzer button. A new pane will appear on the right side of your screen.
Click Start recording.
Interact with your report or click Refresh visuals in the Performance Analyzer pane.
Once the visuals load, you can expand any visual in the list to see the details. Underneath options like "DAX query" and "Visual display," you'll find the query used to generate that visual. You can click Copy query to paste it into a text editor and examine it.

While this method won't give you a complete dump of all your metadata, it’s a quick and easy way to troubleshoot or understand individual report elements.

Method 2: Using DAX Studio for a Deep Dive

For a complete and powerful way to get Power BI metadata, DAX Studio is the ultimate tool. It's a free, third-party application built by Power BI experts that connects directly to your data model and lets you run queries against it. You can use it to extract virtually every piece of metadata about your model.

When to use this method: You need a complete list of tables, columns, and especially all DAX measures to create a data dictionary or technical documentation.

How to Use It:

Download and Install DAX Studio. You can find it by searching for "DAX Studio" online, it's a safe and widely used community tool.
Open your .PBIX file in Power BI Desktop. DAX Studio needs to connect to an active model.
Launch DAX Studio. It will automatically detect your open Power BI file. Select it and click Connect.
Once connected, you will see a query window. On the left side, there's a Metadata pane where you can browse tables and columns just like in Power BI Desktop.
To extract the metadata systematically, you'll use an advanced feature called Dynamic Management Views (DMVs). These are special queries that ask the data model about itself. Go to the DMV tab on the left.

Useful DMV Queries for Metadata Extraction

In the DAX Studio query window, you can run simple queries to get what you need. Click the "Run" button to execute them.

To get a list of all tables:

To get a list of all columns in your model:

To get a list of all your DAX measures and their complete formulas:

This is often the most valuable one for documentation.

To get all relationships between tables:

After running a query, DAX Studio will display the results in a grid. You can then easily export this data to an Excel or CSV file by going to the Output tab in the results pane and selecting your preferred format.

Method 3: PowerShell and the Power BI API for Automation

If you need to get metadata for multiple reports in the Power BI Service or want to automate documentation as part of a larger process, using PowerShell is the way to go. This approach involves interacting with the Power BI REST API through PowerShell cmdlets (commands).

When to use this method: You're an admin or developer who needs to get service-level metadata (like workspaces, reports, datasets, and refresh status) in bulk and automate the process.

Getting Started with PowerShell:

Install the PowerShell Module: First, you need to install the Microsoft Power BI management module. Open PowerShell as an administrator and run:

Connect to Your Account: Next, use a command to log in to your Power BI account:

A login window will pop up. Enter your credentials.

Example PowerShell Scripts:

Once you're connected, you can use simple commands to get Power BI metadata from the service.

List all workspaces:

List all datasets in a specific workspace:

List all data sources for a specific dataset:

The API is best for getting catalog-level information about what exists in the Power BI Service. While retrieving detailed model schemas (tables, columns, measures) via the API is possible using XMLA endpoints, it becomes more complex. For that specific need, DAX Studio is often faster and easier.

Final Thoughts

Extracting Power BI metadata is essential for proper governance, auditing, and making your reports easier to maintain. You can start with the simple built-in Performance Analyzer for quick checks, use a powerful tool like DAX Studio to create detailed documentation, or leverage PowerShell to automate administrative tasks across your whole Power BI environment.

At the end of the day, the need to manually track measure formulas and table structures is often a symptom of how disconnected and complex data can become. My team and I created Graphed to simplify this entire process. We automated the hard parts, like connecting to all your data sources and making sense of the underlying schemas. Because our AI handles data analysis, you can get insights and build powerful dashboards just by asking questions in plain English, without ever needing to worry about the underlying tables or writing a single line of DAX.