Options Window - Standard

DAX Studio offers a number of options which users can use to customize their experience.

The options list can either be navigated by clicking on one of the categories on the left hand side

Or you can use the search box to find specific settings

Custom Export Format

Setting	Description	Default
CSV Delimiter	Specifies what field delimiter should be used when exporting to CSV	Default List separator character (from regional settings)
'Other' Delimiter	The delimiter to use when CSV Delimiter is set to Other	n/a
Quote String Fields	Sets whether string fields should always be quoted	true

DAX Formatter

Setting	Description	Default
Default Format Style	Specifies whether DAX Formatter should favour Long or Short lines	Long Line
Skip space after function name	Specifies whether a space should be skipped after a function name	false

Defaults

Benchmark

Setting	Description	Default
Cold Cache Runs Enabled	Sets whether cold cache runs should be executed	True
Cold Cache Runs	Sets the default number of cold cache runs when benchmarking	5
Warm Cache Runs Enabled	Sets whether warm cache runs should be executed	True
Warm Cache Runs	Sets the default number of warm cache runs when benchmarking	5

Defaults

Setting	Description	Default
Separators	This setting can either be set to US/UK (commas as the list separator character) style or Other (semi-colons as the list separator character)	US/UK
Enable Clear Cache Auto by default	checking this option will enable Auto Clear Cache by default	False
Show Username in Titlebar	This option will show the current windows login in the title bar	False

Theme

Setting	Description	Default
UI Theme / Mode (Light, Dark, Auto)	This setting will change the current app theme. This can also be changed by clicking on the icon in the title bar	Auto

Editor

These settings control the display and behaviour of the main editor window

Setting	Description	Default
Editor Font Family	Sets the font used by the Query Editor pane	Lucida Console
Editor Font Size	Sets the default font size (in points)	11pt
Show Line Numbers	controls whether line numbers are displayed	true
Enable Intellisense	whether to display Intellisense options while typing in the query editor	true
Enable Word Wrapping	whether to word wrap the query editor so that the horizontal scroll bar is not used	false
Convert Tabs to Spaces	if this setting is TRUE hitting the tab key will insert spaces instead of a tab character. The number of spaces inserted is controlled by the Indentation Size setting.	False
Indentation Size	This is the number of spaces to insert if Convert tabs to spaces is set to TRUE.	1
Intellisense Width	this option can be used to increase the default size of the intellisense dropdown window	100%
Show Getting Started Dialog	Controls whether the Getting Started Dialog is shown when you first connect to a data source	True

Logging

Setting	Description	Default
Logging Level	Sets the default level of information written out to the log file	Warning

Metadata Pane

Automatic Metadata Refresh

These setting control the bahaviour of the automatic metadata refresh

Setting	Description	Default
Prompt before refreshing Metadata	Controls whether DAX Studio will show a prompt before refreshing metadata	False

Detect Metadata Changes

These settings control which connection types DAX Studio will automatically check for metadata changes

Setting	Description	Default
Local Connections	For any connections to localhost (eg. PowerPivot, Power BI Desktop, SSDT)	true
Network Connections	For any connections to SSAS	true
Cloud Connections	For any connections to data sources that start with asazure:// or powerbi://	false

Scrollbars

Setting	Description	Default
Auto hide vertical scroll bars	Controls whether the vertical scroll bar will auto hide	True

Preview Data

Setting	Description	Default
Row Limit for Preview Data	Controls how many rows are returned when you choose the Preview Data option from the right-click menu	500

Tooltips

This section controls what additional information is displayed in the tooltips for various metadata objects

Setting	Description	Default
Show Basic Statistics	This will show statistics like min/max/distinct values for a column	true
Show Sample Data	This will show a sample of 10 values from a given column	true

Hidden Objects

This section controls the visibilty of hidden objects in the Metadata pane.

Setting	Description	Default
Show Hidden columns, tables and Measures	This setting allows for the showing of objects that are hidden in the normal report views	true

Sorting

This section controls the sorting of objects in the Metadata pane.

Setting	Description	Default
Sort Folders First in metadata pane	This setting will force folders to be sorted first in the metadata pane	true

Privacy

Setting	Description	Default
Block All Internet Access	Stops DAX Studio from all external access. This option can only be set by an administrator during an 'All Users' install and overrides all the other options below. (and they will show up as disabled when this option has been set)	false
Block Version Checks	Stops DAX Studio from checking for and notifying of available updates	false
Block Crash Reporting	Stops DAX Studio from sending crash reports to the developer. There is a small chance that the screenshot of the crash could include personal information. Although you can untick the option to include the screenshot in the report if this is the case.	false
Block External Services	Stops DAX Studio from accessing external services (such as DaxFormatter.com). We never send any data externally, but there is a small chance that query text might contain personal information if you were writing queries that filtered for specific information like Customer Names	false

Proxy

These settings control if/how DAX Studio will use a Proxy server to connect to online services (like DaxFormatter.com and crash reporting)

Setting	Description	Default
Use System Proxy	If set to true DAX Studio will attempt to use the Proxy settings from the operating system	true
Proxy Address	The url for your proxy server	(blank)
Proxy User	The username for accessing the Proxy server	(blank)
Proxy Password	The password for accessing the Proxy server	(blank)

Query History

DAX Studio keeps a log of recently executed commands (both successful and failed commands)

Setting	Description	Default
History Items to keep	by default DAX Studio keeps a limited number of recent queries (Note: setting this number too high can affect the startup time for DAX Studio)	200
Show Trace Timings (FE/SE)	This setting controls whether any trace timings are also capturd in the query log	true

Results

Results - Grid

These settings change settings for the Results window

Setting	Description	Default
Automatic Format Results	This setting controls whether the results pane attempts to automatically format numbers and percentages	false
Default Date Automatic Format	Controls the default date format when Automatic Format Results is enabled	yyyy-MM-dd
Font Family	This sets the font for the results pane	Segoe UI
Font Size	This is the default size for the results font	11pt
Scale Font with Editor	When this option is selected increasing the zoom factor on the editor will also increase the zoom for the results pane	true

Results - Excel File

Setting	Description	Default
Always write cell references	This setting adds extra metadata to the excel file which helps compatibility with more external applications that read xlsx data, but it does also increase the file size.	True
Use Zip64	Enables writing xlsx files larger than 4Gb, but not all client applications may be able to read these files	False

Server Timings

Setting	Description	Default
Highlight Vertipaq Callbacks	Highlight xmSQL queries containing callbacks that don't store the result in the storage engine cache.	true
Replace column ID with name	Replace xmSQL column ID with corresponding column name in data model.	true
Replace table ID with name	Replace xmSQL table ID with corresponding column name in data model.	true
Simplify SE query syntax	Remove internal IDs and verbose syntax from xmSQL queries.	true

Sounds

Setting	Description	Default
Play a sound after long running operations	Will play a sound after long running operations (export/benchmark/view metrics/queries)	false
Only Play a sound is not active	Only play a sound if DAX Studio is not the active application	false
Long Operation Sound		Beep
Long Query Seconds	If a query takes more than this number of seconds it will trigger the Long Operation Sound	10 sec

Timeouts

These settings control the length of various timeouts for potentially long running operations

Setting	Description	Default
DAX Formatter Request Timeout	DAX Studio sends a background request https://daxformatter.com this setting controls how long we wait before we consider the request as failed and log an error	10 sec
PowerPivot model detection Timeoue (sec)	This is the number of seconds DAX Studio will wait for a response from Excel while trying to determine if the active workbook has a data model	30 sec
Server Timings End Event Timeout	The trace events in the tabular engine are raised on a low priority background thread and occasionally if the server is very busy some events can be discarded. This setting controls how long DAX Studio will wait for a queries final QueryEnd event before it gives up and logs a warning. For high latency connections (such as Azure AS and the Power BI XMLA endpoint) you may need to increase this setting.	15 sec
Trace Startup Timeout	When DAX Studio starts a trace it periodically "pings" the server with an empty command. It then waits until the trace captures one of these requests before it considers the trace to be fully active. This setting controls how long DAX Studio will wait to see one of these "ping" requests before it stops waiting and logs and error. For high latency connections (such as Azure AS and the Power BI XMLA endpoint) you may need to increase this setting.	30 sec

Trace

This setting controls the behavours of the various tracing features.

Setting	Description	Default
Legacy DirectQuery Trace	This setting controls whether tracing of DirectQuery Events is enabled for connections to servers with a version number earlier then 15.0 (SSAS 2017). For older servers the DirectQuery events do not allow per session filtering on the server so we have capture events from all sessions and apply filtering in DAX Studio. This places much more load on both the client and server which is why this option is off by default. If you need to enable it we recommend keeping any traces running for as short a time as possible	false

Vertipaq Analyzer

Setting	Description	Default
Include TOM	this option will include a copy of the current data model's .bim file (which is just metadata) in the .vpax file	True
Read Statistics from data	This will cause Vertipaq Analyzer to issue more accurate, but more expensive queries to the data source	True
Read statistics from DirectQuery tables	Specifies whether or not to gather statistics from Direct Query tables	False
Direct Lake Behaviour	Determines how the Read statistics from data behaves for Direct Lake models more details	ResidentOnly
Sample Referential Integrity	The number of example missing keys to display. Note: these are only shown when viewing metrics, when you save a vpax file this information is not included	3
Do not show options dialog	Specifies whether to show the Options dialog when viewing or exporting metrics. This setting can also be set when the user ticks the option to not show this dialog again	False
Statistics Column Batch Size	The number of columns to include in each batch when collecting statistics. For large Direct Lake models it may be necessary to reduce this amount to avoid out of memory issues	50
Table/Column name display in Columns tab	Specifies how the table & column names are shown in the Columns tab	combined as Table-Column

Preview Features

Show Debug Commas - turning this option on replaces the Swap Delimiters command in the ribbon with the Debug Commas command

Show XMLA Commands - will show command events in the All Queries trace