DAX Measures Not Recognized in Dynamic Text Boxes and Q&A Visual (Solved)

[vmore]

Hi:

I'm sharing my experience with this problem, which it took me a couple days to solve, in hopes that it can be helpful to anyone.

I was writing report summaries with the functionality that allows you to add dynamic values (like, ad hoc DAX and AI-generated measures) to text boxes when, one day, it suddenly stopped detecting my measures and I couldn't add them anymore.

I couldn't understand why this was happening. They were clearly available in the model, but not showing up inside the text box visual, eventhough they worked perfectly in other visuals, like Cards.

I tried all the tricks I could think off or find online: restarting Power BI, duplicating the .pbix file with a different name, clearing PBI's cache, using an earlier version of the file, asking a colleague to see if it was a problem with my PBI version, recreating some measures… but none of it worked.

💡 Eventually, I found the key: the issue was related to the Q&A visual and its natural language engine, which is also used under the hood for the Add-a-dynamic-value (+ Value) functionality within text boxes.

✅ Solution:

1. Go to Modeling > Q&A Setup > Synonims.
2. Disable as many tables as possible in that view.
3. Close the dialog box and wait for the changes to apply.

After doing this, PBI immediately started recognizing my measures inside the text box (and also in the Q&A visual, which I was not using in my report, but I tried as a result of this issue).

🧠 Why does this seem to happen?

The Q&A visual shares the same natural language engine that powers dynamic values in text boxes (basically, Copilot). If there's an issue with how the semantic index handles your tables or measures, it may prevent new measures from being recognized properly. In my experience, this tends to happen in models with too many tables and/or measeures (in my case, I had 700+ measures when I detected the issue).

I couldn’t find this solution anywhere in the forums or online, so hopefully this saves someone else a lot of time — it took me nearly two days to figure it out.

Cheers.

[lbendlin]

Great find. Consider making this a blog post.

[Anonymous]

Hi @vmore,

Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum and for your continued engagement and for being such an active contributor to the community. Your dedication to helping others and sharing your experiences doesn't go unnoticed. We truly appreciate your efforts in keeping the community vibrant and informative.

Best Regards,

Hammad.