Support Multiple Date/Time & Date Formats in Dataflows

[sajit]

I would like to request a feature enhancement for Microsoft Fabric Dataflows to support multiple Date and Date/Time formats, similar to what is currently available in Power BI Desktop.

Power BI Desktop datetime format options

In Power BI Desktop, we can easily parse and interpret various date and datetime formats within a column. However, in Fabric Dataflows, the formatting options are limited and inflexible.

It would be extremely helpful if Dataflows could allow flexible configuration of multiple formats for date and date/time columns. This feature would greatly improve usability, especially when handling data from diverse sources where date formats are inconsistent.

[triozi]

Also for Dataverse Dataflows for importing data. Seems to be fixed to the ridiculous US format, unless I format it as a string. groan.

[miguel]

Power Query and Dataflows do not emit data formats, but rather data types. The formatting options that you see in Power BI Desktop are pretty specific to the reporting layer of the semantic model, but those formats are not being emitted by Power Query and Power Query is not aware of them either.

Would you mind telling us a bit more about which scenarios you may need specific formats today for Dataflow Gen2 or where Dataflow Gen2 may fall short for the data types that it supports?

[scott_stauffer1]

@triozi I wonder if what you mean is that you like to have Power Query interpret dates if they come in as dd/MM/YYYY instead of MM/dd/YYYY? You can do this In Power Query by Right Clicking on the Column, Change Type, Using Locale... Choose date as the data type, Select you locale. PQ will now interpret that column's data base on the locale's expected date format.