Power BI Desktop slow performance when too many elements are added

[RafalK]

Hi everyone,

I would like to get some answers on why does Power BI Desktop get so slow and unresponsive once too many visuals are added.

I can see that this behaviour is independent of DAX calculations and amount of data - it is all about the number of elements in a page. Once you add more then 15, 20 things become unresponsive and you have to wait several seconds just to click on anything. 

And don't even think of selecting multiple items together..

Same thing happens when I resize Power BI Desktop app window.

This issue only appears in Power BI Desktop - once the report is published and opened in a web page it all works fine.

Perhaps this has something to do with Power Bi checking interactions between elements every time I click on them or some other process but why is this happening?  

Another funny thing is that once I open my report from a page with multiple visuals, everything lags even when I go to a tab with a small number of visuals. If I however save the report on a page with a small number of visuals and close and repen it, all works fine. Does Power BI cash the visuals from the first page?

In any case this is very anoyning and limits the speed and scope of the development. I was hoping that grouping items together will help but it makes little to no difference.

[Anonymous]

I'm experiencing similar Power BI Desktop performance issues with a report with many non-data elements (buttons, shapes, images, etc.). @RafalK, did you discover any ways to improve performance in these cases?

[amitchandak]

@RafalK , performance has many aspect from joins(bidirectional) , Measure calculations , no of visual etc.

refer if these tips can help

https://maqsoftware.com/expertise/powerbi/power-bi-best-practices
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/guidance/power-bi-optimization
https://www.knowledgehut.com/blog/business-intelligence-and-visualization/power-bi-best-practices
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/MBAS-Gallery/Microsoft-Power-BI-The-Do-s-and-Don-ts-of-Power-BI-Rel...
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/MBAS-Gallery/Microsoft-Power-BI-My-Power-BI-report-is-slow-What-sho...

[RafalK]

Thanks for all the links however none of those were able to answer my question.

My problem is the number of elements an Power BI tab. Whenever I exceed a certain number thinks like resizing the Power BI Desktop windows take over 5-10 seconds and everything is working super slow.

Just to be clear - I have deleted all elements with data - graphs, tables.. all visuals.

All I have left are shapes, texts and images. All info I could find in the links is to limit the number of visuals on a page. 

This I can understand as it would generate queries that make me wait for the data. But why do things like shapes and text slow down Power BI Desktop? 

Those thinks are crutial for my UX design as I like to design my reports similar to modern websites. Those elements should cost nothing to rander.  I just don't understand what Power BI is spending all that time on

[RafalK]

Thanks. I will go through those and check the solution.