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mobioki
New Member

Importing Date Field using Excel vs Import from Azure SQL

Our PowerBI setup links directly to a SQL DB in Aure.  When importing the data, the date field (which is formatted as SMALLDATETIME) imports into 1 field. However, when we take the same data and import it into PowerBI from an excel file where the date field (startdate) is formated as dd-mmm PowerBI automatically creates two new fields startdate month and start date year.

 

How do I get the SQL DB to do the same when that date field is imported?

3 REPLIES 3
Greg_Deckler
Super User
Super User

@mobioki - There's some sort of magic that goes on where sometimes this happens and sometimes not, I haven't been able to figuire out the pattern. That being said, you can always create these yourself:

 

StartDate Month = MONTH([startdate])

StartDate Year = YEAR([startdate])

 

M code, you would use Date.Month and Date.Year



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Thanks. I do that but then Month and Year are Integers. So that when I look at data from 2015 (Nov, Dec) and 2016 (Jan) in a single visualation Jan is shown under 1 and Nov and Dec are shown as 11 and 12.  This view does not keep the chronological order of the dates.

You can simply concatenate the two fields together and cast to an integer data type, or a nice display field:

 

// Power Query
// Create an integer in the format YYYYMM

= [Year] * 100 + [Month]

// Create a nicely displayed text string: YYYY-MMM
= Date.ToText( #date( [Year], [Month], 1 ), "YYYY-MMM" )

If you want to use the second for a good display field, you'll have to create the first as a sort column and sort the display field by the numeric one so that they are in chronological order.

 

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