PowerBI to understand Date from 3 letter month initial

[AndrewDang]

Hello all;

I am trying to create a target table. On my table, we have a 3 letter initial for the month (period) that contains target qouta for the month.  PowerBI treats this column as text instead of Date. I am wondering what do i need to do to covert this field to date.  I receive an error when I convert it using Power BI.

Thanks in advance for your help

Andrew

[MattAllington · Accepted solution]

I assume you have a year field somewhere, or you can hard code it.  There are probably lots of ways, but the way I would do it is to add a new column in power query, and put in a formula like this

"1-" & [MonthNameColumn] & "-2016"

Then change the data type of the new column to "Date" from the menu and it should work.

Of course flip the month and day portion if you need the US date format

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @AndrewDang,

After creating a new column suggested by @MattAllington, then you can convert the column to date type in specified date format.

If you have any question, please feel free to ask.

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu

[AndrewDang]

Thanks @MattAllington and @v-qiuyu-msft

I will give it a try today and keep you posted if I run into any issue.

Have a great day.

Andrew

[MattAllington · Accepted solution]

I assume you have a year field somewhere, or you can hard code it.  There are probably lots of ways, but the way I would do it is to add a new column in power query, and put in a formula like this

"1-" & [MonthNameColumn] & "-2016"

Then change the data type of the new column to "Date" from the menu and it should work.

Of course flip the month and day portion if you need the US date format