Measure Killer Measure Killer

Find broken visuals in Power BI reports

See how many visuals are broken in every Power BI report in your tenant — then drill into which visuals, on which pages, and the exact reason each one broke.

Last updated · June 12, 2026

Availability: Broken-visual detection — Measure Killer v2.9.5 and later.

What you get

Every report in the Power BI reports tab gets a Broken visuals column — how many visuals in that report are currently broken. The count rolls up through the tree: expand a report to see which pages (including hidden pages) carry broken visuals, and expand a page to see the count per individual visual.

Power BI reports tab — Broken visuals column showing the count per report, page, and individual visual

Instead of waiting for a report consumer to stumble over an error message, you see immediately — tenant-wide — where a problem might be.

Why visuals break

A broken visual is one that renders an error instead of data — the “Something’s wrong with one or more fields” (or filters) message Power BI shows its viewers:

Broken visuals in a Power BI report — error messages instead of data

Typical causes:

  • A column or measure the visual uses was renamed or removed from the semantic model.
  • A measure the visual references contains broken DAX — the expression no longer evaluates.
  • A visual-level filter references an artifact that no longer exists or no longer works.

These often go unnoticed: the report still opens, the rest of the page still renders, and nobody tells the report owner.

Run the analysis

  1. Run a tenant-wide scan and complete Phase 2 by selecting items and clicking Analyze.

  2. Run Phase 3 — the Broken visuals column only populates after the analysis pass runs, not straight after Phase 2.

  3. Switch to the Power BI reports tab.

  4. Sort the Broken visuals column (descending) to surface the reports with the most breakage.

  5. Right-click a report or a page and choose View broken visuals:

    Right-click menu on a report or page — View broken visuals

  6. The detail window lists every broken visual with the reason it broke:

    Broken-visuals detail window — page, visual, broken artifact, table, dependency kind, and the full error message

What the detail list shows

  • Visual — the visual type (pivot table, clustered column chart, line chart, …).
  • Artifact name and Table name — the column or measure the visual depends on.
  • Kind — how the broken artifact is used: VisualDependency (a field bound to the visual itself) or VisualLevelFilterDependency (a visual-level filter).
  • Reason — the exact error, e.g. “Artifact Column 3 in table 01_Customers_Clean not found in the model” or the failing DAX expression with its syntax error.

Common workflows

  • Fix high-traffic reports first. Combine the Broken visuals column with views and page views: a broken visual on a page nobody opens can wait — one on a page with hundreds of monthly views is an incident. Sort by views, then scan the Broken visuals column.
  • Verify nothing broke after a model change. After a schema change, a model cleanup, or a migration, re-run the scan and check the Broken visuals column — it’s the fastest tenant-wide answer to “did we break any reports?”
  • Trace breakage back to broken DAX. If the reason is a failing expression, Find broken DAX lists every failing measure and calculated column per model, and the DAX expressions tab lets you locate and inspect the offending expression.
  • Audit hidden pages too. Broken visuals on hidden pages are detected as well — useful because hidden pages are exactly where breakage survives longest unnoticed.

What to do with the findings

  • Fix the visual or the model — re-bind the visual to an existing field in Power BI Desktop or the Service, restore the removed artifact, or repair the broken DAX.
  • Notify the owner — the reports tab shows the owner / last modified by, so you know who to hand each finding to.
  • Export to Excel / JSON — paid editions can export the report inventory including the broken-visuals counts for remediation tracking.