Weird Date Format on Clustered Column Chart X-Axis

[BITomS]

Hi there,

I have encountered some weird formatting in the PBI Service, that is not occurring in the desktop application.

In one of my reports, I have a clustered column chart with date (type: continuous) along the X-Axis and a date list slicer for years, quarters and months. The date format on the chart when the slicer is unfiltered, or when a year or quarter is selected, is 'MMM YYYY' as expected.

However, when I select a single month from the date list slicer, the format is inconsistent - sometimes it is 'MMM YYYY' but other times, it is 'DD MMM hh:mm', or sometimes 'YYYY' only.

Something appears to have gone awry with the interaction at the month level. Please may you investigate?

Default slicer & chart x-axis format:

Slicer month selection & updated x-axis (Service ONLY):

[v-xiaoyan-msft]

Hi @BITomS ,

I tried to reproduce your problem, but my result is that the time display on Power BI Service is the same as in Power BI Desktop.
Am I missing something? Can you provide a sample pbix or tell me the detailed reproduction steps?
Does this issue occur in other reports?

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Caitlyn

[BITomS]

Hi @v-xiaoyan-msft ,

Thanks for looking at this. I have shared a file here (please let me know if any issues accessing): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x0FgTd8zx-CBXyDXCHCWfWH9kALwh7_G/view?usp=sharing

This is a new file and the problem still occurs after uploading it to the PBI service (curiously, January looks wrong on the desktop application as it is only showing the year).

Once on the PBI service, Jan to Mar are consistent with desktop, but April to October are showing the incorrect format, before Nov and Dec return to the expected format.

[v-xiaoyan-msft]

Hi @BITomS ,

This is confusing, I have changed dashboards to try different ones and have not experienced anything similar to you.
Does this problem occur with a particular dashboard in a particular report? Or are all your dashboards affected?
Does it help if you change browsers?

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Caitlyn

[BITomS]

Hi @v-xiaoyan-msft,

It doesn't appear to be a browser issue as I get the same behaviour in Chrome or Edge.

I have checked other reports and it is happening in all of them, so it looks like a broader issue rather than an isolated case. What I find most strange is that the formatting is fine in the desktop application on all reports, it is only the service where this is a problem, so something is happening after publishing to make this happen. To confirm, were you succesfully able to download the 'Format Test' file I shared through google drive so you could see it working locally?

I was wondering if it is a configuration issue I have made, but I don't see how it can be. Regardless of the configuration, the format behaviour after selecting an option from the slicer is inconsistent, so it definitely seems like a bug:

• My thinking was firstly around the X-Axis type (continuous or categorical), but it has to be continuous as we would want to show gaps in the data.
• Due to this type, I was wondering if there was an issue with my date table in the model (maybe you can spot something?), but it all seems to be in order, with the correct (Date) data type and PBI identifying a date hierarchy.
• The final thing is the slicer is using a date hierarchy, whereas the chart x-axis is using just date. So potentially there is something PBI doesn't like here, but it still doesn't account for the inconsistent behaviour and why it works on desktop but not service.

As a final point, I have noticed that depending on the region where the service is hosted, there can be differences (when bugs are fixed, some regions seem to see the fix before others). So for clarity, I am UK based. If you are in a different location, perhaps this is why you are not able to replicate the behaviour?