Trying to divide two columns but getting error

[Anonymous]

I'm new to DAX SORRY if this is a silly question. I'm trying to Divide two columns to find margin. 

Here's my intention 

(Column A-Column B)/Column A

What I wrote : 

Measure = DIVIDE(SUM('table name'[fieldname]-SUM('fieldname'), SUM('table name[(field name)])

Error I'm getting

The SUM function only accepts a column reference as an argument.

Thanks for your help!

[v-yinliw-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

According your code , you lost a “)” in the end of the first “table name[fieldname]”, in front of the minus.

Hope this helps you.

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _Yinliw

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[daXtreme · Accepted solution]

Writing code, any code for that matter, requires from the author something that's called pedantry.

Your code has an obvious problem:

Measure = DIVIDE(SUM('table name'[fieldname]-SUM('fieldname'), SUM('table name[(field name)])

Can you spot it? It's rather easy based on what the error message says. And it says:

The SUM function only accepts a column reference as an argument.

Column references in DAX are of the form 'Table'[ColumnName]. Measures, on the other hand, should never be preceded by the name of the table they reside in.

By the way, this form:

SUM('table name[(field name)])

might also be wrong if the field name is not originally surrounded with "(..)". What's more, you're missing the closing ' (apostrophe) here...

You have to write code exactly as the rules dictate. Otherwise, you'll be getting errors all over the place.