Get certified for free when you join Fabric Data Days 2026 and dive into Fabric, Power BI, SQL, AI, and other essential data skills.
Join nowData Days is here! Join us now for 60+ days of learning, challenges, and connection. Learn more
Hi
I am creating a quick BI report using data in excel from a third party company. Within the excel data, a field exist for 'time_spent_on_a_call.' When I imported this data into query, I changed this field's data type to by duration. Once I import the data and try to use this field this field is now data type decimal.
Any way the this field in the visual can display as it displays in the query and excel? (meaning show like this "00:01:23") Is the only option to turn this to a text field? Doing so I would then be able to sum.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
Solved! Go to Solution.
You won't be able to SUM, AVERAGE, etc. with them in text form, so you need to either parse them out and convert to numbers or use the approach I suggested (which I think will be easier).
Regards,
Pat
To learn more about Power BI, follow me on Twitter or subscribe on YouTube.
You won't be able to SUM, AVERAGE, etc. with them in text form, so you need to either parse them out and convert to numbers or use the approach I suggested (which I think will be easier).
Regards,
Pat
To learn more about Power BI, follow me on Twitter or subscribe on YouTube.
Okay thanks!
In the query editor add a column using Duration.TotalSeconds([DurationColumn])/60 to get minutes in decimal form you can then use in analyses.
Regards,
Pat
To learn more about Power BI, follow me on Twitter or subscribe on YouTube.
Above is a piece of the data this company provided in excel. (Which I then loaded into BI)
The duration periods already provided in Intervals. Is it best just to use these as TEXT fields??
Don't miss out on Data Days, June 15 through August 7. Learn Fabric, Power BI, SQL, AI and more.
Check out the May 2026 Power BI update to learn about new features.
| User | Count |
|---|---|
| 23 | |
| 21 | |
| 20 | |
| 18 | |
| 13 |
| User | Count |
|---|---|
| 58 | |
| 51 | |
| 38 | |
| 31 | |
| 26 |