Today’s tip I found completely by accident. In the Open Report window, I had a long list of previous Power BI reports in my “recently used” list, many of which I had long ago deleted or moved. I wanted to clear the list and could not find a way to do that in that screen. With Word or Excel, it’s easy to do in the equivalent screen so it was driving me a little nuts that I was not able to do it in Power BI Desktop.

How to do it

Go to the Get Started screen (File menu > Get Started). For me, it is the screen where I’ve unchecked the box that says “Show this screen on startup”. Yeah, that screen. Oh, the irony that it’s now useful to me!

Right click on any of the items in your list, and the “familiar” options like you might see in Excel or Word are there, including “Clear unpinned items”.

Get Started screen in Power BI Desktop

That’s it. It’s that easy. Don’t you wish everything was that easy?

The “Open Report” window showing nothing in the recently used list.