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Low Disk Space because of shadow extract


Published: 06 Oct 2016
Last Modified Date: 20 Jul 2023

Issue

When running Tableau Desktop, you may experience low disk space due to the creation of shadow extracts (.ttde and .hhyper files).

Environment

Tableau Desktop

Resolution

If you experience low disk space on your computer because of shadow extract files, you can manually delete these files. Go to the following location to delete a shadow extract:
  • For Windows: Users\AppData\Local\Tableau\Caching\TemporaryExtracts   
  • For Mac: ~/Library/Caches/com.tableau.caching/TemporaryExtracts
Note: In some cases, shadow extract files might be stored in your My Tableau Repository.

Cause

Tableau creates and saves a shadow extract (.ttde and .hhyper files) in order to load data more quickly. After Tableau creates five shadow extracts, Tableau deletes the oldest shadow extracts to create space when it adds a new one.

Although shadow extracts contain underlying data and other information similar to the standard Tableau extract, shadow extracts are saved in a different format that cannot be used the same way as Tableau extracts. Shadow extracts cannot be used to recover data.

Additional Information

The contents and size of the shadow extracts change depending on the data you work with. Shadow extracts are only created when you work with workbooks that are based on non-legacy Excel or text, or statistical files.

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