Introducing the Power BI Desktop updates for January 2025

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Power BI Desktop updates for January 2025 Part one of a four-part series of blogs
This month includes some pretty minor updates (such as new ways to do treemaps), but we're breaking with our usual rules to highlight two features in preview: a new way to save files and a new language called TMDL for updating models. Introducing the Power BI Desktop updates for January 2025 (this blog) The new Power BI Desktop file picker is very welcome The new TMDL model definition language New ways of viewing treemaps, and of spacing them out We've been creating our idiosyncratic monthly blogs on Power BI updates since November 2016, and also deliver online and classroom Power BI courses.

Power BI Desktop updates for January 2025

Part one of a four-part series of blogs

This month includes some pretty minor updates (such as new ways to do treemaps), but we're breaking with our usual rules to highlight two features in preview: a new way to save files and a new language called TMDL for updating models.

Introducing the Power BI Desktop updates for January 2025 (this blog)
The new Power BI Desktop file picker is very welcome
The new TMDL model definition language
New ways of viewing treemaps, and of spacing them out

We've been creating our idiosyncratic monthly blogs on Power BI updates since November 2016, and also deliver online and classroom Power BI courses.

Posted by Andy Brown on 03 February 2025

For us the big two announcements this month are about features in preview, although if you're a treemap fan there's a lot to get excited about too:

Feature	Notes
New way of saving reports	Hallelujah! Clearly everyone else hated the file picker that Microsoft recently introduced as much as we did, so it's been revamped. Microsoft's intention is to make it live as soon as possible - the only reason it's still in preview is that Microsoft "acknowledge that these updates may disrupt your workflow; therefore, they are not enabled by default."
The new TMDL scriptng language	This is such a significant new feature that we want to cover it now, even though it's very much in preview: it will allow experienced developers to make changes to a report's underlying data model by typing text, which should be quicker for some people and also allow version control of models using Git.
New treemap features	The treemap visual now includes 3 new tiling methods, as well as new spacing controls.

A reminder of how to enable preview options

To turn on the first two features you'll need to click on the Power BI Desktop File menu and then choose this option:

This is at the bottom left of your Power BI Desktop window.

You can then choose Options:

You should then tick these two boxes to enable the new file picker and the new TMDL editing tab:

Tick these two boxes to enable the above preview options.

You'll then be prompted to exit and re-enter Power BI Desktop to make these changes take effect.

It's something of a tradition now in this blog to wonder when Microsoft will turn on on-object interaction, a huge redesign to the way in which report creators willl interact with visuals.

I wonder when they WILL turn this feature on?

Parts of this blog
Introducing the Power BI Desktop updates for January 2025 (this blog) The new Power BI Desktop file picker is very welcome The new TMDL model definition language New ways of viewing treemaps, and of spacing them out