Locale settings not working?

[jcapezzuto]

The locale settings don't seem to be working in the latest (June) update.  I'm setting this to Portuguese (Brazil) and it isn't changing the thousands separator to a period as it should.  Additionally, dates are not formatting as dd/mm/yyyy when using the global G format.  The values are not formatting correctly with any visualization, in desktop or online.  Is there another setting somewhere?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @jcapezzuto,

I am not able to reproduce your issue. Could you please share sample data of your scenario and post the output in Power BI Desktop? 

Based on my test, after I change global regional setting to Portuguese (Brazil)  in Power BI Desktop and import data from a sample text file, everything works as expected. For more details, you can check the following screenshots.






From the above figures, you can note that Power BI Desktop interprets the value “100,002” as a decimal number using a Portuguese (Brazil) format, and the date value “2/3/2016”  is interpreted as “3/2/2016” in Query Editor and “Wednesday, March,2016” in Data View. Furthermore, you can change the date formats to other existing formats in Data View, if you need to change it to DD/MM/YYYY format, you will need to use Format function.

For more details about how Locale Setting works in Power BI Desktop, you can review this simialr blog: https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2015/05/25/working-with-international-date-and-number-formats-in-power-... .


Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

[MathewsLebethe]

 Thanks, this is exactly what I'm looking for

[jcapezzuto]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for the response.  The example you provided is showing how text values are interpreted when imported.  My problem is different - I'm reading data from a database, and the data types are defined correctly.  However, they are not being displayed in the correct formats on reports.  The dates and numbers still use US English formats instead of following the Locale settings. 

Thanks,

Jon

[Anonymous]

Hi @jcapezzuto,

Could you please post the table structure and share some sample data here? I will test your data by creating a table and import it into Power BI Desktop.

Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

[jcapezzuto]

Hi @Anonymous,

After further review I see now that you are correct - the locale setting in the model is used for interpreting imported text values.  Users will see dates and numbers formatted to their locale based on browser settings when viewing reports in the portal, and this is working correctly now.

Sorry for my misunderstanding. 

Regards,

Jon

[marcorusso]

I wrote an article explaining how to change the culture settings that is inherited from the operating system current culture when you create a Power BI Desktop file and that you cannot change later (in Power BI Desktop UI).

http://www.sqlbi.com/articles/changing-the-culture-of-a-power-bi-desktop-file/

I hope it helps.

Marco Russo - SQLBI