Why is PowerBI still dumb with dates after all this time?

[BugmanJ]

Afternoon All,

So, pretty easy task, plot temperature on Y and Date (Hiearchy) on X, gives a lovely graph:

But lets add "Year" to it and it gives me

And i can make this REALLY small and still get the clarity of the data present:

 Yay. Go PowerBI. But now I want to have 4 differet lines, one for each year and it falls apart. I put a day label instead (as that would give me 365/366 days along the bottom, same for every year) and now it has an ugly grey bar along the bottom. I dont care if it doesnt label every one at all, but it insists on doing this. 

It does not matter what I do, this is the smallest font, minimum gap, there is no way to reduce labels but I want the same as the above, that i can make smaller and it still hold the data when someone mouses over it. Yes i could just do jan/feb/mar and so on but that averages the data, i want each data point. Its obviously possible, but not when you have multiplie lines which is really really dumb.

Tableau can do this no problem, Excel no problem (albeit no mouse over), Power BI er, no!

Anyone have any better ways to do rather simplistic thing?

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @BugmanJ,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum. I reproduced the scenario, and it worked on my end. I used it as sample data and successfully implemented it.

outcome:

I am also including .pbix file for your better understanding, please have a look into it.

Hope this clears it up. Let us know if you have any doubts regarding this. We will be happy to help.

Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

[BugmanJ]

Intresting, but I was hoping for a date on the X axis like you can normally, not a number. The above scenario works but using a tooltip is not the same as having the date at the bottom. It also falls apart on a leap year. It should allow a collaspe text X axis.

[v-kpoloju-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @BugmanJ,
Thank you for the follow-up question.

Power BI currently cannot overlay multiple calendar years on a true Date X-axis. As soon as the Date type is used, the axis becomes time-based, so each year is plotted in its own position and can’t collapse into a single shared scale. The DayOfYear numeric axis is the only supported way to create an aligned, multi-year seasonal comparison chart.

Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @BugmanJ,

Just checking in to see if the issue has been resolved on your end. If the earlier suggestions helped, that’s great to hear! And if you’re still facing challenges, feel free to share more details happy to assist further.

Thank you.

[BugmanJ]

Well, as exaplined above, not really. Your solution allows resizing, but the date isnt really displayed at the bottom and if Power BI is dumb that it cant handle it like this then we cant really take this any further. I didnt want to accept your post as a solution because its not, its a 1/2 workaround with the problem still remaining, but the post is useful for those that follow for understanding why PowerBI is dumb on dates. But i do thank you for your help.

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @BugmanJ,
Apologize for the delay in response and thanks for the follow-up question.

You are right that seeing the actual calendar Date along the X-axis would be ideal. Today, the built-in line chart does not support a collapsed multi-year Date axis. When a true Date type is used, Power BI always plots each year separately along the timeline and that forces either the hierarchical grey bar or spacing issues you originally saw. The numeric DayOfYear approach is currently the only supported way to properly align multiple years day-by-day on a single, smooth axis. I agree this feels more like a workaround than the perfect solution.

As a suggestion or may work as per your requirement you can use a custom visual such as Deneb / Vega-Lite, which gives full control over date formatting and handles year overlays more gracefully, including leap years. I genuinely appreciate your feedback your scenario is a good example of why more flexible date axis options would be helpful in future updates.

Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @BugmanJ,

Just checking in to see if the issue has been resolved on your end. If the earlier suggestions helped, that’s great to hear! And if you’re still facing challenges, feel free to share more details happy to assist further.

Thank you.

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @BugmanJ,

Just wanted to follow up. If the shared guidance worked for you, that’s wonderful hopefully it also helps others looking for similar answers. If there’s anything else you'd like to explore or clarify, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thank you.

[v-kpoloju-msft]

Hi @BugmanJ, 

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum. Also, thanks to @amitchandak, for his inputs on this thread. 

Has your issue been resolved? If the response provided by the community member @amitchandak, addressed your query, could you please confirm? It helps us ensure that the solutions provided are effective and beneficial for everyone.

Hope this helps clarify things and let me know what you find after giving these steps a try happy to help you investigate this further.

Thank you for using the Microsoft Community Forum.

[BugmanJ]

Bad bot. Has not solved the problem.

[amitchandak]

@BugmanJ , In power, continuous Axis only works with Date and Number. So We have problem when use text column. 
There are workarounds like having MMDD numeric column, but it can cross the month date boundary 

Also, the below column will show the wrong year, while showing a continuous line

Create a new date column 

Date1 = date(1972, month([Date]), Day([Date]))

Even with the format MM/DD it does not give the desired output