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ArtFi's avatar
ArtFi
Frequent Visitor
10 years ago
Solved

Sort months in chronological order

I know this question has been asked a lot, but my specific issue is that I have lot of different data for one chart (which I select with a slicer) and not every year starts with January, eg if it's M...
  • KGrice's avatar
    KGrice
    10 years ago

    Hi ArtFi. Can you combine your desired month number with a year prefix to give it a list of one-to-one values? For example, if you want 2015 to be ordered Jan then Feb etc., they would be numbered 201501, 201502. If you wanted 2016 to be ordered Mar, Jan, Feb, then March would still get 201601, then 201602 for Jan and 201603 for Feb. You'd just need to find some way to define the custom sort order in your column, either through a conditional column or maybe hard-coding the values in an Excel table.

     

    If it's just that a year doesn't start with January because there is no January for that year (e.g., no sales for that month), you could still use the YYYYMM format to sort your months, and if the year starts with March, it won't hurt your chronological sort order anyway.

v-haibl-msft's avatar
v-haibl-msft
Microsoft Employee
9 years ago

ArtFi

 

I’m a little confused about one thing. If one year starts with May, why you need May to return number 1 in the column next to it?

If you use following column formula for MonthNum, it will return number 5 and you’ll not encounter the problem you have now.

MonthNum =
MONTH ( Table1[Date] )

 

Best Regards,

Herbert

ArtFi's avatar
ArtFi
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago

v-haibl-msft May needs to return 1, because otherwise January of the next year would be 1, February 2 and so on. If I'd try to sort now, January of eg 2016 would before May 2015 in the chart, you see?

  • v-haibl-msft's avatar
    v-haibl-msft
    Microsoft Employee
    9 years ago

    ArtFi

     

    As CheenuSing mentioned, you’d better create a calendar table with similar formula as below if you don’t have.

    CalendarTable =
CALENDAR ( "1/1/2015", "12/31/2016" )

    Then create relationship between these two tables with date key.

     

    Create three columns in the Calendar table. Select MonthName column and make it sorted by YearMonth column.

    YearMonth = 
YEAR ( CalendarTable[Date] ) * 100
+ MONTH ( CalendarTable[Date] )
    MonthName = 
FORMAT ( CalendarTable[Date], "mmmm yyyy" )
    Year = 
YEAR ( CalendarTable[Date] )

    Now you should be able to sort months as below. Make sure you select the MonthName column in Calendar table for Axis.

     

    Best Regards,

    Herbert

    • Baskarved's avatar
      Baskarved
      Regular Visitor
      9 years ago

      Hi,

       

      v-haibl-msft , Could you please let us know why are you multiplying the year value in "YearMonth" colum.Since if we change any  number instead of 100 the expected result is not coming.

       

      YearMonth = 
YEAR ( CalendarTable[Date] ) * 100
+ MONTH ( CalendarTable[Date] )

       

    • anandav's avatar
      anandav
      Skilled Sharer
      9 years ago

      Hi @v-haibl-msft,

       

      Thank you for this post. I had exactly the same problem and followed your steps and solved the issue. Great post and thanks a lot!

       

      One question:

      I had a Month Name column and when tried to use the YearMonthIdex column to sort the MOnth Name, it gave the following error:
      “.. You cannot sort the Month Name column by YearMonthIndex. You cannot have more than one value in YearMonthIndex for the same value in Month Name.”
       
      But as suggested in your post when I created a another column with YearMonth I could sort that column using the YearMonthIndex column.
      Any idea why the original Mont Name column did not allow me to sort using the YearMonthIndex?
       
    • anandav's avatar
      anandav
      Skilled Sharer
      9 years ago

      Hi v-haibl-msft,

       

      Thanks to you suggestion I solved the month sort order but I again have hit a problem with Week order.

      As per below image, I am trying to sort the WeekDuration column by WeekNumOfYearIndex but it is giving an error.

      “We cannot sort the 'WeekDuration' column by 'WeekNumOfYearIndex'. There Can't be more than one value in 'WeekNumOfYearIndex' for the same value in 'WeekDuration'. Please choose a different column for sorting or update the data in 'WeekNumOfYearIndex'."

       

      Data type of WeekDuration is Text.

      Data type of WeekNumOfYearIndex is Whole Number.

       

      What works:

      1. I can sort the MonthName (MMMM) column by Month (month number) column.

      2. I can sort the MonthNameYear (MMMM YYYY) column by MonthYearIndex (YYYYMM) column (as per your reply in this article).

       

      What doesn't work:

      1. Sorting the WeekDuration (DD MM YY - DD MM YY) by WeekNumOfYearIndex.

      WeekNumOfYearIndex = (Dim_Date[MonthYearIndex]*100)+Dim_Date[WeekOfYear]

      WeekDuration = Day(Dim_Date[StartOfWeek]) & " " & FORMAT(Dim_Date[StartOfWeek], "MMM YY") & " - " & Day(Dim_Date[EndOfWeek]) & " " & FORMAT(Dim_Date[EndOfWeek], "MMM YY")

       

      Any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

      Thanks

      • anandav's avatar
        anandav
        Skilled Sharer
        9 years ago

        Further update:

        Just keep things consistent, I used the WeekStartDate across all columns.

         

        I my view, this ensures that a given value in WeekDuration will have the same value repetaed in WeekNumOfYearIndex.

        In my earlier sample when the month changes sometimes a given value in WeekDuration will have different values in WeekNumOfYearIndex for the same WeekDuration.

        But even after correcting and ensuring that a given WeekDuration does not have different values in WeekNumOfYearIndex, I still get the same error as explained in earlier post.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    9 years ago

    ArtFi

     

    Please clarify

     

    a) Do you have any Calendar or Date Table ?

    b) How has this been built- is it continuous from the Minimum of Fact Table date and upto the maximum of Fact Table Date

    c) What is the business rule to be applied to start a new year with different months as the first month number. 

     

    It will be good to  have a sample of your data along with the data model to come out with appropriate solution.

     

    Cheers

     

    CheenuSing