topic Re: How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration? in Report Server

How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration?

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 17:59:52 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I linked an external database to access and then linked from access to PowerBI.
I am trying to create a dashboard to extract worked hours, but when doing the link described above, the worked hours came as DATE/TIME, not duration, so PowerBI does not sum the hours correctly, I need to convert DATE/TIME to duration but didn't find any solution to make this.

I already tried to do as bellow
EDIT QUERY / Transform Collum / Transform Time only = The time came i.e. 5:00:00.
Also tried to convert as Duration, but PowerBI just give me a message of error, not allowing to convert it.

Can someone help me?

Re: How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration?

Greg_Deckler — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 18:22:35 GMT

Anonymous Chelsie Eiden's Duration - Microsoft Power BI Community

Re: How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration?

d_gosbell — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 22:27:09 GMT

You cannot automatically convert a Time column to a duration since a Time is a single point in time so it has no duration. But in your case it sounds like something like 05:00 should be a duration of 5 hours. So one way to do this is calculate the duration from midnight to the specified time. You can do this by subtracting a time of "00:00" from your current time column (subtracting one time from another returns a duration)

If you click on "Add Column" in the ribbon then choose the "Custom Column" optoin and enter a formula like the following it will return a duration.

[YourTimeColumn] - Time.FromText("00:00:00")

Re: How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration?

searl — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 17:50:22 GMT

worked perfectly - thank you

Re: How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration?

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:24:26 GMT

d_gosbell it dosn't work if duration if longer than 24 hr. Is there any solution to this case?

Re: How to convert DATE/TIME Column to duration?

d_gosbell — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:55:54 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

d_gosbell it dosn't work if duration if longer than 24 hr. Is there any solution to this case?

It depends what format your input is in. The original question here was about converting a time column to a duration and times cannot have more than 24 hrs. So you either have a text value or maybe a datetime.

If you have a text value something like "27:35:12" in your data then you can use a function like the following example to convert the format into the following format ddd.hh:mm:ss which is what power query uses for durations longer than 24 hrs

let fixDuration = (input as text) => let parts = Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter(":")(input), hour = Number.FromText(parts{0}), days = Number.RoundDown( hour / 24), newHour = Number.ToText( Number.Mod(hour, 24)), newValue = if days > 0 then Duration.FromText(Number.ToText(days) & "." & newHour & ":" & parts{1} & ":" & parts{2}) else Duration.FromText(input) in newValue, Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45WMjK3Mja1MjRSitWJVjLUM7YyNrMyNFSKjQUA", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [TextColumn = _t]), #"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(Source, "DurationColumn", each fixDuration([TextColumn])) in #"Added Custom"

if your data is already in ddd.hh:mm:ss format you can just use Duration.FromText to convert the type