Help sorting column order

[rosscortb]

Hello,

Hoping you can help, might not have done this correctly but here's where I am. I  have two date columns, start and end. Shown as i.e 01 Feburary 2015.

In then needed to change the format  so created two new columns with the measure of 

Start Date Year Mon = FORMAT('Job Positions'[Start_Date],"MM/YYYY")

End Date Year Mon = FORMAT('Job Positions'[End_Date],"MM/YYYY")

so now shows as 02/2015

Now, I needed to create another column to join these together so I have

Start Date and End Date = CONCATENATE('Job Positions'[Start Date Year Mon],CONCATENATE(" ~ ",'Job Positions'[End Date Year Mon]))

so shows something like 02/2015 ~ 03/2016

Problem is how to do a Sort by Column so that the Current Job Position is at the tob and previous job below and so on, in a table. Is it because its a text field I can't do it?

[v-cherch-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @rosscortb 

It could not work when you sort the same value[Start Date and End Date] by different values[Start Date].You may use sort by 'Start Date Mon' as below green part.

Regards,

[rosscortb]

Thanks for your help @v-cherch-msft , wasn't aware that you could join the columns that way. Thanks again.

[jthomson]

Really don't get what you're asking exactly - you go on about concatenating a couple of columns together then go off on a complete tangent, can you clarify what you're actually wanting?

[HotChilli]

When you say 'Sort by Column' hopefully you know about https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-sort-by-column#sort-using-the-sort-by-column-butto...

and you could use the job positions[start date]

[rosscortb]

Yeah, wouldn't let me use Start Date.

[HotChilli]

Ah, fine.  Error messages are usually helpful.

The message says it doesn't know how to sort because start date is not unique 'enough', that is, the same start date exists for different 'start and end date' values.

So you need to find a way of making it unique, maybe add a calculated column (number) to sort by, constructed from the 'start and end date' field like yyyymmdd from start date and append yyyymm  from end date.  Just an idea, i haven't tested it.