Layout Buttons All Greyed Out in Power BI Desktop (Using SSAS Live Connection)

[leonardmurphy]

I'm using Power BI Desktop (December 2015 - 2.30.4246.281 64-bit).

I'm using a direct connection to SSAS tabular (SQL 2014).

In the report designer screen, almost all of the buttons that are helpful for report layouts are grayed/greyed out. I can't add a text box, or an image, or a shape. I can't arrange, align or distribute. I can't change the Page View. I can't edit interactions. I can't even choose 'New Visual' or 'New Page' on the ribbon.

When I connect to an Excel file (say), then a lot more of these options are enabled.

Has anyone else noticed this? I can understand some ribbon options being unavailable with a live connection (adding new measures, etc) - but I would expect the report layout tools to be available. 

I noticed this problem on the SSAS connector. I also upgraded to the Enterprise Gateway and am still seeing it.

EDIT: If I publish the report, I do have the ability to add shapes & text boxes on the PowerBI website. (But that is risky since every time I publish, I'd have to re-add the shapes & text boxes)

EDIT 2: The November PBI Desktop appears to be working as expected. And opening a file in the December version of PBI Desktop that was created in a previous version also works as expected. So this might be quite obscure (if it isn't something wrong with my machine).

[chrisdas]

Hello,

I'm having the same issue with the modeling tab being greyed out, but the buttons are still unavailable to select even after refreshing the data...  I'm connected via Microsoft Analysis Service Cube.  Any suggestions?

Thanks in advanced,

Chris

[pqian · Accepted solution]

OK we've chased the issue down. We'll add it to the list of issues to fix next round.

For now, hitting the "refresh" button will re-enable those buttons.

[leonardmurphy]

Hitting Refresh works perfectly. I can't believe I didn't try that.

Thanks for looking into this so incredibly fast.

[djnww]

Hi @leonardmurphy,

Thanks for raising this. I've noticed this bug too but never thougth of reporting it. Actually, I restarted Power BI each time to fix it. Now I know just to click on refresh 🙂

Cheers,

Dan

[pqian]

I've just tested using the december release and see the same thing, so it's not your machine...

I'll try to locate the cause and see if we can push out a fix 😞