Forum Discussion
Helper IIIhow to sort Date (MonthYear column)?
Hello,
need urgent help of yours:
I have a column Date (e.g. 01.01.2016), then I added columns Month and Year and concatenated them to get the column MonthYear(e.g. January2016):
Now the problem is, that I have date from 3 years(2016-2018) and I can not sort them correctly:
Here I sorted them by Month Number, but as you see, it doesn't work correctly. I can not sort them by column Date either, since I have multiple Date values for one MonthYear value.
So how could I sort MonthYear correctly, so that values Jan2017 and Feb 2017 will be shown after Months of 2016?
Could anyone help?
thanks a lot!
22 Replies
- tringuyenminh92
Memorable Member
Hi Jolyon,
In case you want to sort by Year and Month of date, you could add Calcuated column for YearMonthInt as:
YearMonthInt = Dates[Date].[Year]*100 + Dates[Date].[MonthNo]
Then choose MonthYear column and choose sort by YearMonthInt column.
If this works for you please accept it as solution and also like to give KUDOS.
Best regards
Tri Nguyen
Jolyonhi tringuyenminh92
could you please also tell, how you concatenated MonthYear?
Question to this formula: YearMonthInt = Dates[Date].[Year]*100 + Dates[Date].[MonthNo] : is Dates the name of table? "Year" and "MonthNo" are your columns or DAX functions?
because in my case PowerBI underlines this formula as red: YearMonthInt = Client[Datum].[Jahr]*100 + Client[Datum].[Mon]thank you kindly!
- tringuyenminh92
When we cast Date column to Date type, PBI will suport us to access its Month (month name) and Month value (MonthNo)
My MonthYear= Dates[Date].[Month] & "-" & Dates[Date].[Year]
I think your expression of YearMonthInt is correct, just choose sort by column.
Hi tringuyenminh92 I am having this kind of data in reports and also wnat to sort as same Jolyon sorting for his reports
means if multiple years data we have first it will sort by year in that case . But how to prepared calculate colum for above scenario as per above data. help me here i am new to DAX querys. also not having date column in my all tables so please suggest me how to achive that sorting on multiple year data
I have been struggling with this for a while and this is so easy. Isn't that always the way eh! Thanks very much.
For others with similar problems:
How to arrange PowerBI date labels chronologically:
If a Visual is distored because the date labels are aranged aphabetical (e.g.: April 2017; August 2017; .. ) instead of chronological (e.g. January 2017; February 2017), then you need to sort your datelabels column by a chronological column on the same table.
The easiest way is to create a new column with an int representation (e.g. 201701) of the datelabels column (January 2017) that you want to sort chronologically. Next, sort you column by the new column that contains the int values.
Example:
Date Table Date MonthYearShort DateInt 01.01.2017 jan.17 20170101 15.01.2017 jan.17 20170115 29.01.2017 jan.17 20170129 12.02.2017 feb.07 20170212 Unfortunately, it is not possible to sort the MonthYearShort column by a column such as Date or DateInt because every value needs to match exactly one value in the column that will be sorted by. So you need to add a new column:
YearMonthInt = FORMAT ( Dates[Date]; "YYYYMM" ) // or any other format that suits your text column
Date Table Date MonthYearShort DateInt YearMonthInt 01.01.2017 jan.17 20170101 201701 15.01.2017 jan.17 20170115 201701 29.01.2017 jan.17 20170129 201701 12.02.2017 feb.07 20170212 201702 Now each datelabel matches one int value: jan.17 => 201701; feb.17 => 201702
The next step is to select the text column (MonthYearShort) and click Sort By and select the int column YearMonthInt, see link:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-sort-by-column
hey tringuyenminh92 you did a great gob in finding the trick for this common issue. Congratulations!!
I have a small issue, i did created similar kind of column and i did sorting also based on that column but my visuals are not getting sort, based on the new column rather i can't see any effect on my visuals.
If possible, post some sollution for it.
Thanks in advance.
- tringuyenminh92
Hi ajsingh,
After setting up by "sort by column", in the top right of chart (icon: "..."), please choose sorting by the field MonthYear, then it will be sorted in chart.
- theov
Advocate III
You can make a calculated column and magnify year's importance by multiply to 100 and add month and sort your column by new column. I'd rather put year month 🙂 Here is a comprehensive video about calendar in power BI also :
Hi tringuyenminh92,
Tried setting up the Sort by Column but my table and charts still didn't sort properly. I followed the steps and the YearMonthInt formula worked. What am I missing?
