Sales Total by Product Category Circular Error

[jefferson5]

I am trying to create a table visual to display a number of summaries for product sales. The strange thing is the following works for four columns but when I add a fifth, I get a circular reference error.

I have three tables (simplified for demo): Sales, Products, Product Categories which have the associated relationships defined.

I want to display columns such as Sum for Ladies, Sum for Mens, Sum for Sundries, % Sundries of Total etc. Note, I do not want all categories so am not using a pivot visual. I am adding the following columns to the Sales table:

MensTotal = CALCULATE( SUM(SalesLines[price]), 'ProductCategory'[Name] = "MENS")

This appears to work ok until I create a fifth column, then I get a "A circular dependency was detected". It appears to be fine for the first four. It doesn't even matter if the fifth column is the same category as one of the other working ones, so does not appear to releate to the category itself.

Sorry, I am new to Power BI and am really struggling to understand why something which seems pretty simple is proving so difficult. Many thanks in advance.

[HotChilli]

Check this threadhttps://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/quot-A-circular-Dependency-was-detected-quot-error-while/td...

That might be a bit advanced for your current powerbi knowledge but the reason for circular dependency is there.

Are you sure you want to create calculated columns in a table?  Don't you want to create measures and add them to a visualisation? And, slightly off-topic, does it make sense to SUM prices?

[jefferson5]

Many thanks for your response. I might have confused the terminology a bit - what I meant was I was adding columns and applying them to a visualisation as you suggest (not editing the query and adding columns).

I am summing sales lines (price) by staff member for a specific product category. I did not mention as wanted to keep example simple.

Deleting the columns and adding them as measures instead has resolved the issue but I am still confused. I was clicking "New Column" and entering DAX query which I think it was then treating as a measure because the field icon was showing as a calculation (not column icon). Explicitely choosing "New Measure" instead seems to have resolved it.