What is inactive relationship in Power BI?

< 1 min read

An inactive relationship is a relationship defined in the model but not used automatically in filtering.
Power BI keeps it disabled because another active relationship already exists between the tables.
In my project, Sales had Order Date and Delivery Date linked to the Date table.
Only Order Date was active, while Delivery Date remained inactive.
When users wanted delivery-based reports, visuals showed wrong results initially.
So I used USERELATIONSHIP inside a DAX measure to activate it temporarily.
This allowed switching between Order Date and Delivery Date analysis correctly.
It avoids ambiguity while still supporting multiple date logic in the same model.
We commonly use it for alternate date or role-playing dimension scenarios.

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