MicroStrategy’s .mstr files promise portability, modularity, and self-contained dashboards, but under the hood, they’re opaque, compressed, and often undocumented. If you've ever tried to reverse-engineer or audit a dashboard without access to the original project, you know the pain.
Today, we're excited to introduce mstr-unpacker, an open-source tool that unpacks .mstr files and extracts their meaningful contents (metadata) in a human-readable format.
Whether you're:
Migrating from MicroStrategy to another BI platform,
Auditing dashboards for inconsistencies or redundant metrics,
Documenting visualisations across hundreds of dossiers,
Or just curious about what’s really inside a .mstr file...
You're likely stuck. .mstr files are ZIPs full of semi-structured blobs, hidden strings, encoded props, and unnamed IDs. There’s no native tool to inspect or trace how visuals tie to metrics or attributes.
mstr-unpacker DoesThis tool:
✅ Unzips .mstr files and extracts internal .delta, .cube, and config files
✅ Parses readable strings from binary structures
Migration from MicroStrategy to Power BI, Tableau, or Looker
Auditing dashboard contents without logging into MSTR
Validating dashboard structure against design specifications
Automating metadata extraction at scale
Get Involved
⭐ Star the repo: https://github.com/AdvancingAnalytics/mstr-unpacker
🐛 Found a strange .mstr encoding or have an idea? Open an issue
💬 Join the conversation: help us build a full MicroStrategy decompiler
We're using the core output from mstr-unpacker to power our MicroStrategy to Power BI converter, so we can help our customers quickly and easily move away from MicroStrategy. If you're struggling to migrate from MicroStrategy, get in touch!
In our full solution, we can:
Detect and classify visual types (bar, grid, kpi, etc.)
Map metrics and attributes to visuals using semantic proximity and identifier inference
Output a structured JSON for automation and migration
MicroStrategy doesn’t make it easy. But mstr-unpacker makes it possible.