How to Change X Axis Label Date Format

[Mike88]

Hello,
I’m very new to Power BI but from reading other articles I believe I understand that PowerBI does not yet allow for customizing the X Axis like you can in excel and visualizations are limited to continuous or categorical (and associated intervals/formats). While I hope this is a feature added in the future, is there a way to simply change the format of the X-Axis Date label that is automatically generated in continuous graphs?

For Example, the graph below label is automatically generated as [$-en-US]mmm YYYY Format. Is there a way to change the X axis Labels to M/D/YY format so that it would display 12/XX/20 instead of Dec 2020? The graph is generated from Daily sumation data of minute data grouped by Daily bins if that matters. 

Thank you in advance for the help as I start the learning curve. 

[parry2k]

@Mike88 as mentioned if the type for the x-axis is continuous, you cannot change the format. You have not much choice there, so you have to live with the default format when using continuous. 

I'm sure there is an idea for this on the ideas forum, upvote for it, if there is none, create a new Idea. Not sure what else to tell you here 😶

Check my latest blog post Year-2020, Pandemic, Power BI and Beyond to get a summary of my favourite Power BI feature releases in 2020

I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!

⚡Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.⚡

[parry2k]

@Mike88 to understand continuous and categorical, read this post. Basically, in the case of continuous, you have no control over the format.

Check my latest blog post Year-2020, Pandemic, Power BI and Beyond to get a summary of my favourite Power BI feature releases in 2020

I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!

⚡Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.⚡

[Mike88 · Accepted solution]

Thank you @parry2k for attaching the reference material, So If I understand it correctly when using continuous, I pretty much get what I get for labels and won’t have control of their display but I can see the whole picture graph.

Alternatively, I could use categorical which will allow for labels to formatted how I desire, but each data point will receive a data label. The result is that the amount of data that can be displayed in the graph pane is limited, resulting in the scroll wheel and not being able to view the graph in its entirety if there are more than a few points.

So essentially, with Power BI’s current functionality I pretty much have two options if I wanted to display daily data (such as throughput, yield, profit, etc.) for a long duration like a year or quarter

• Live with the format autogenerated to show the whole graph
• Change the format resulting in a scroll wheel if there are two many points for the labels to fit

If that’s the case, the autogenerate labels are the lesser of the evils. Thank you again for the information.

[parry2k]

@Mike88 precisely, you got it. Not sure what your real requirements are, really to see data by date, usually you can always have drill thru from year -> Quarter -> Month -> Date, etc....so for example if you drill down by month, you have a maximum of 31 dates and it might fit in a month but again it is not one size fits all.

Anyhow, you have an understanding of what needs to be done to control the date format, you can go ahead with what you think works best for you.

Good luck!

Check my latest blog post Year-2020, Pandemic, Power BI and Beyond to get a summary of my favourite Power BI feature releases in 2020

I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!

⚡Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.⚡

[parry2k]

@Mike88 change type for x-axis on format pane to categorical from continuous.

 

Check my latest blog post Year-2020, Pandemic, Power BI and Beyond to get a summary of my favourite Power BI feature releases in 2020

I would ❤ Kudos if my solution helped. 👉 If you can spend time posting the question, you can also make efforts to give Kudos to whoever helped to solve your problem. It is a token of appreciation!

⚡Visit us at https://perytus.com, your one-stop-shop for Power BI-related projects/training/consultancy.⚡

[Mike88]

Thank you both for taking the time to response to the question, it's very much appreciated. 

I think maybe it’s me not understanding power BI terminology yet to ensure I’m in the correct location or overlooking something since I can’t seem to get to the solution quite yet.

In Past Articles such as this one

 Date Display Formats

There appeared to be a format under modeling that could change the display labels

However, when I tried to replicate this I find the fomat area now in it’s own tab (assuming an update from the past few years since the reference post was made) and does not appear to change the graph appearance at all.

In terms of the cutom format strings, would these be located in the “Relationship” section? Following along the article it appears I am in the correct location based on the accompanying selection options. I attempted to make a custom format, and nothing changes on the graph.

Article Ref:

My attempt:

Is there something unique with Area graphs or groupings that may be preventing this, or am I just missing the mark? Either way your help in pointing me in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

[Gabriel_Walkman]

Hum. Try with a Date instead of DateTime.

[Mike88]

Thank you for the suggestion,

Fomating appears to work with the Viloin chart, but with the standard charts I've tried (Bar, line, Area) it seems to have no affect and Scatter seems to force individual X axis labels like catagorical, creating the scroll bar issue and not being able to visualize the one graph at once when daily data is presented for more than a month or so. So far changing to Date from Datetime, still prevents format control for some reason. 

[mahoneypat]

You can use custom format strings for that and keep the axis continuous.

Creating a simpler and chart-friendly Date table in Power BI - SQLBI

Regards,

Pat

[Gabriel_Walkman]

Hi!

Perhaps people see this as a low effort post and that's why there are no replys.

Did you try googling ie. "power bi change date format"?

In report view, choose your date parameter and have a look at the "Format" button on the top bar (if I remember correctly.)