Tabular Editor Documentation & Configuration

Guidance for searching Tabular Editor documentation and understanding TE3 configuration files (.tmuo, Preferences.json, etc.).

Pre-flight

Before using documentation search, verify pbi-search is installed:

pbi-search --version

If the command is not found, inform the user and offer two options:

1. Install pbi-search (recommended): see bin/README.md for install instructions via cargo install or GitHub Releases at data-goblin/pbi-search
2. Search without the CLI: use WebFetch to retrieve docs directly from these sources:
   • Microsoft Learn: https://learn.microsoft.com/
   • Tabular Editor docs: https://docs.tabulareditor.com/
   • DAX reference: https://dax.guide/<function>/
   • SQLBI articles: https://www.sqlbi.com/articles/
   • Data Goblins: https://data-goblins.com/

The CLI is strongly preferred; it searches all sources simultaneously and returns clean markdown. The fallback requires manual URL construction and multiple fetches.

Documentation Search

Use the pbi-search CLI, the preferred way to search Tabular Editor docs and related Power BI/DAX resources. It searches Tabular Editor docs, DAX.guide, SQLBI, Microsoft Learn (Power BI + Fabric), the TE blog, and Data Goblins simultaneously, returning clean markdown.

After install, populate the local manifest cache (once):

pbi-search sync        # ~13s

Searching

# Search all sources
pbi-search search "creating measures"

# Search only Tabular Editor docs
pbi-search search "BPA rules" --source te-docs

# Search TE blog + TE docs
pbi-search search "incremental refresh" --source te-docs --source te-blog

# JSON output for structured use in agents
pbi-search search "workspace mode" --source te-docs --json

# Include content excerpts
pbi-search search "calculated columns" --source te-docs --excerpts

Fetching full docs