Data type is wrong?

[Anonymous]

Hi guys! First of all Happy New Year.

I´m working on a report for my work which has a lot of projects with their respective last update on the database. I´m making a function that calculates the days since the last update. The problem is that I´m having negative numbers and inconsistencies.

The function for the Column " Days since Last Update" is: 

Days since Last Update = TODAY()-'TPA Portfolio'[Last Update Date]

It´s important to remark that the Last Update Date column is stated by PowerBI as a Text field and the format is DD/MM/YYYY (Argentinian date)

Thanks for your help...

[Interkoubess]

Hi @Anonymous,

What about using the datediff function for this issue...

Let us know

[Anonymous]

Days since Last Update = DATEDIFF(TODAY(),'TPA Portfolio'[Last Update Date],DAY)

And I´m getting: In DATEDIFF function, the start date cannot be greater than the end date

I think the Power BI is messing between the date format of my PC (which is English format mm/dd/yyyy) and the format of the data base

[MarcelBeug]

Check the syntax of the DATEDIFF function.

The start date should be supplied first.

[Anonymous]

I dont think that the syntax is the problem. I'm guessing that the problem is on the date formats.

[MarcelBeug]

In that case you have more than 1 problem.

You can convert text dates to real dates in the Query Editor.

And still you need to provide the earlier date as the first parameter to DATEDIFF.

You may think otherwise, but the syntax is quite clear:

DATEDIFF(<start_date>, <end_date>, <interval>) 

You may consider providing more information if you want helpful help.

[MarcelBeug]

This query TPA Portfolio:

let
    Source = #table(type table[Last Update Date = text],{{"31/12/2017"}}),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"Last Update Date", type date}}, "es-AR")
in
    #"Changed Type"

works fine with this custom column:

Days since Last Update = DATEDIFF('TPA Portfolio'[Last Update Date],TODAY(),DAY)

Convinced?

[Anonymous]

First of all, I appreciate your help.

Where do I have to insert that syntax function? 

let
    Source = #table(type table[Last Update Date = text],{{"31/12/2017"}}),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"Last Update Date", type date}}, "es-AR")
in
    #"Changed Type" 

[MarcelBeug · Accepted solution]

Nowhere. It was just an example to illustrate the solution.

In your case, go to the Query Editor, select your column with textual dates and adjust the data type using Locale.

The video below illustrates how; it starts already in the Query Editor.

Here is the Query Editor