Power BI is turning 10, and we’re marking the occasion with a special community challenge. Use your creativity to tell a story, uncover trends, or highlight something unexpected.
Get startedJoin us for an expert-led overview of the tools and concepts you'll need to become a Certified Power BI Data Analyst and pass exam PL-300. Register now.
Hi everyone,
I'm trying to load a pretty large csv file (~400mb) into Power BI. I encontered that my data has different formatting for a specific row. Is there a way for me to make the data uniform?
here are the data formatting differences I'm seeing:
Thanks in advance!
Hi Grivil,
So your import has different formats. If you have a mix between
dd-mm-yyyy
mm-dd-yyyy
yyyy-mm-dd
yyyy-dd-mm
Unfortunately that's problematic. Let's say you have the value: 06-01-2023
In those cases power query can not decide whether a value is:
6 january 2023
1 June 2023
You'll find that there are different formats to extract a date from a value. You probably want to make use of the Date.FromText function and specify a format code as shown here: https://powerquery.how/date-totext/
But inconsistent formatting is hard to overcome unfortunately. Can you please check whether it is really that inconsistent?
Cheers,
Rick
--------------------------------------------------
@ me in replies or I'll lose your thread
Master Power Query M? -> https://powerquery.how
Read in-depth articles? -> BI Gorilla
Youtube Channel: BI Gorilla
If this post helps, then please consider accepting it as the solution to help other members find it more quickly.
If that doesn't work, please open the CSV file in a text editor like Notepad or Notepad++, and copy/paste some representative data as text. Be sure to obfuscate any confidential information
i tried that already, excel is giving mw a hard time editing the data as well.
I don't have access to my device right now, but the screenshot i showed you is the actual data. It's basically timestamps. With different formating for certain dates.
What you are showing is NOT the actual data. What you are showing is the result of opening the csv file in Excel. But if you are unwilling to show the actual data I will not be able to assist.
@Grivil you should contain the date format "dd-mm-yyyy" at the loading time and after loading you can format it as per your requirement.Thank You!!
This is your chance to engage directly with the engineering team behind Fabric and Power BI. Share your experiences and shape the future.
Check out the June 2025 Power BI update to learn about new features.