Something's wrong with one or more fields
Power BIA visual refers to a field, and the model has no field by that name and of that kind. Power BI Desktop draws the visual with this message instead of data. In a PBIP project the reference is in the visual's visual.json, as a table name and a property name.
How the message appears
Copied exactly from each source. A name in square brackets replaced one from someone else's project.
Something's wrong with one or more fields.
Something's wrong with one or more fields. See details. Fix this
In general form, with the parts that change in brackets:
Something's wrong with one or more fields. See details. Fix this
The fix
Point the reference at a field the model has, with the kind the model gives it. If the model has the field as a measure, the reference says Measure. If the model has the field under another name, change Property to that name.
In visual.json:
"field": {
"Column": {
"Expression": {
"SourceRef": {
"Entity": "Sales"
}
},
"Property": "Sales Amount"
}
}"field": {
"Measure": {
"Expression": {
"SourceRef": {
"Entity": "Sales"
}
},
"Property": "Sales Amount"
}
}From the SalesSense sample project by Rui Romano (MIT licence).
What causes it
The model no longer has the field
A visual still uses a field the model no longer has. In a Microsoft repository the cause was a deprecated field the report still used, fixed in the next release of the report files.
Source: microsoft/coe-starter-kit issue 8832.
The Report Doctor finds this. It reports “A visual uses a field the model does not have”, with the file and line.
A measure is bound as a column
A field reference says whether it is a Column or a Measure. A tool wrote every field as Column, and Power BI Desktop showed this message on every visual that used a measure. Selecting the measure again in Power BI Desktop fixed it.
Source: maxanatsko/pbir.tools issue 7.
The Report Doctor finds this. It reports “A visual uses a measure as a column, or a column as a measure”, with the file and line.
Worth knowing
- Power BI Desktop's See details lists each field as (table) field, which tells you what to search for in the
visual.jsonfiles.
Check a project in your browser
The Power BI Report Doctor reads a PBIP folder or .zip and lists the file and line to fix. Nothing is uploaded.
Sources
- GitHub issue: microsoft/finops-toolkit issue 1519. The issue description. Read 2026-10-03.
- GitHub issue: maxanatsko/pbir.tools issue 7. The issue description, "Issue 1". Read 2026-10-03.
- GitHub issue: microsoft/coe-starter-kit issue 8832. The maintainer's reply of 2024-08-20. Read 2026-10-03.
Written by Vishnu Shankar.