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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
3 years ago
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Date format on visualizations not matching data

Hello,   Working with data that is based on a FY-Period format, but power BI likes to auto grab it as a date, which is fine, I switched the format to yyyy-mm, which meets what I need. But when putt...
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  • Gianluca88's avatar
    Gianluca88
    3 years ago

     

    Yes, I have had doubts about your request before. 

     

    You have to set the property of X-axis to categorical, rather than 'Continuous' like in the image

     

    Please check and let me know,

    g

     

    If you are satisfied with the answer, please mark it as solution in order to allow other user to get faster the answer to your question

     

jpbarnard's avatar
jpbarnard
Frequent Visitor
3 years ago

I have pulled my hair out in frustration over this lack of proper date format handling in Power BI visuals. Excel has much better features in its charts when it comes to date display format.

 

  1. My date column in my table is explicitly formatted as type Date (not Date/time).
  2. The date column format is set to yyyy-mm-dd (not even Short Date).
  3. When I use the date column as X axis in a bar or line graph visual, with only a few days in the date range, then suddenly Power BI displays the date labels with time stamps, like below where there are three date entries:


    Why time stamps in a date that is neither of date/time type, nor of a format that includes a time portion?
    Why indeed!
    I expected Power BI to display three dates, viz. 2023-04-01, 2023-04-02, 2023-04-03, as formatted in the date column.
  4. However, when I use a longer date range with more entries, then it partly complies with my specified format, like below:


    Still, I expected the format to be yyyy-mm-dd, not dd-mmm as in the above visual snippet.
  5. Go figure. Surely, this is an unfortunate oversight and shocking, too, from a company the size and capability of Microsoft. In one of their prime products. We are not amused at all.
  6. I do want to use Continuous x-axis because it auto-scales its axis ticks and labels. I do not want to resort to the workaround, which is to set the x-axis to Categorical, which option does not scale well for longer time ranges.
  7. Microsoft, do fix this. And chop chop, too, please.