DATEADD not working on certain date values

[juliany]

I have a calculated column in my data set (DataTable2019 Test) which is looking at a date column (History Date) subtracting one year from the date and then returning a custom formatted date. For full context here I'm trying to show the Jan 1st dates as the year end (YE) count for that given year.

This is the formula below:

Datetable2019 Test = FORMAT(DATEADD('Employee History'[History Date], -1, YEAR), """YE"" yyyy")

The formula works perfectly for the 2021, 2022 and 2023 dates in the History Date column, but for the 2020 dates I am getting back blank.

Separately, I seem to have lost the ability for a matrix using this column to be sorted by date. Instead it's being sorted alphabetically.

Please help!

[Andrew59]

I had the same issue with DATEADD and adding multiple years to a certain column. EDATE works perfect in this case EDATE(<date-field, ,nr of months>)

[AUaero · Accepted solution]

I'm guessing your date table doesn't have dates prior to 2020.  DATEADD doesn't work by adding or subtracting from a given date, it returns a result from your date table shifted by the interval you've specified.  If no dates exist prior to 2020, you won't get a result.  Take a look at the DATEADD documentation for more info.
DATEADD function (DAX) - DAX | Microsoft Docs

[juliany]

That makes sense, thank you.

is there another function that can just subtract 1 year from the date in the history table? 

so for the 2020 dates in my table, they would return a result of "YE 2019".

[AUaero]

Take a look at the EDATE function