Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now! Learn more

Reply
tkirk
New Member

Custom Column - Formula Not Complete

I'm trying to create a custom column that takes a date and subtracts 7 days from it. This is my formula:

 

=Date.AddDays([DueDate],-7)

 

It's not working though. The only thing my window says is "The formula is incomplete."

 

Ugh! Any thoughts?

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Thanks all for your help. It appears that there was an issue with my client. I usually work with my data in an RDP with a ton of RAM to help with performance. When I saved my .pbix and opened it on another device, my formula worked beautifully. As a resolution, I was able to get it work. Still don't know what the issue was with my RDP that caused the problem, but maybe that will help if anyone else sees the issue themselves, just try a new machine.

View solution in original post

5 REPLIES 5
Mike_Carlo
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

I was able to get the formula to work.

 

Couple of things you should check, 

1. make sure you power BI desktop is upto date.  The M language has been changing over time and newer releases will have all the commands.

2. The column that your pulling in must be in date format, in my example it was column1...  I did check to see if it would work if I used column1 as text.  It failed, so my guess as to why you may be having an issue could be your data types. 

 

Good luck I hope that helps. 

 

Mike Carlo

www.PowerBI.Tips

 

 

.. Image.PNG

 

 

 

 

Mike Carlo ( https://powerbi.tips )

Thanks for the responses--it seems like this should be working. My column is indeed formatted as a Date field, and my client is updated to the latest version (the October 2017 update). 

 

I had a colleague do the formula in his own dataset and it worked beautifully, just like yours. Interestingly, he never saw the "formula is incomplete" message. As he typed, it gave a more detailed account of syntax errors until he completed the formula. Did you get a similar result? I'm going to save my .pbix and try opening on a different device to see if it's specific to my machine.

Hi @tkirk,

It's weird. I test it and the formula works correctly. And it shows a syntax error(displayed in screenshot1) untill I complete the formula.

unfinishedunfinishedfinishfinish

Best Regards,
Angelia

Thanks all for your help. It appears that there was an issue with my client. I usually work with my data in an RDP with a ton of RAM to help with performance. When I saved my .pbix and opened it on another device, my formula worked beautifully. As a resolution, I was able to get it work. Still don't know what the issue was with my RDP that caused the problem, but maybe that will help if anyone else sees the issue themselves, just try a new machine.

Ashish_Mathur
Super User
Super User

Hi,

 

Why not simply

 

=[bsiwritingduedate]-7


Regards,
Ashish Mathur
http://www.ashishmathur.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/excelenthusiasts/

Helpful resources

Announcements
Power BI DataViz World Championships

Power BI Dataviz World Championships

The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now!

December 2025 Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - December 2025

Check out the December 2025 Power BI Holiday Recap!

FabCon Atlanta 2026 carousel

FabCon Atlanta 2026

Join us at FabCon Atlanta, March 16-20, for the ultimate Fabric, Power BI, AI and SQL community-led event. Save $200 with code FABCOMM.