"Can't create direct active relationship" - even though it was already active

[kyle]

I'm having an odd problem with Power BI Desktop.

I currently have an active relationship between two tables. Everything is working fine.

However, when I make the relationship inactive, then try to make it active again (without changing anything else), I get this error:

I know it's not Salary Bands table that's the issue, as this is a simple table that is only connected to the JobOrders table, nothing else. Additionally, when I make that relationship inactive, it throws the same error with a different relationship.

Couple other notes:

- The reason I'm doing this is because initially I was trying to switch the relationship to another column in the JobApplications table that has the exact same IDs, and remove the current column. I couldn't figure out why it wasn't allowing me to create an active relationship on this new column, and by testing the above I realised it's not an issue with that column, it's giving me this error even on the existing column, just by switching the relationship to inactive and back to active again.

- I know I can use USERELATIONSHIP but our data model is very complex and this would involve making a number of measures and other changes. And of course this relationship should be able to be active, since it was before.

[v-chuncz-msft]

@kyle,

You may check if the following post helps.

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Bi-directional-cross-filtering-ambiguity/td-p/119890

[Anonymous]

There could be a possible circular relationship between the tables. Perhaps a screenshot of the relationship view, to see how the tables relationships are flowing, might help us understand this better.

[kyle]

Hi @Anonymous

I can (see below) but as I mentioned our model is fairly complex, and also the point is that it is working as an active relationship, however whenever I make it inactive, I cannot make it active again, which is bizarre.

I've highlighted the relationship in question (currently it's active in the screenshot). You can see the Salary Bands table is only linked to JobOrders, so that shouldn't be a problem even though the original error message says that there will be ambiguity with this table if I were to re-activate the relationship between JobApplications and JobOrders.

Again this is just a snapshot because we have 30+ tables in our model.

[PROpescu]

This is what actually has to be looked at and addressed, this totally inconsistent behaviour of letting you activate relationships from Model View, but not from Manage relationships UI, but then again later in the day it won't let you do it from Model View either, because.

Or delete one active relation and create a similar, or even identical one, try to activate it, nope! Don't feel like it today, try tomorrow cause who knows!...