filter by date without losing query folding

Hi there. I don't know if this was indeed "solved", as the solutions I read here did not work for me, but I have found a way to at least filter the dates without breaking them (for now). I may still have to change the column data type to 'date' at the end in order for my report to work correctly. Still, filtering dates dramatically lowers the amount of data my query must process, so doing it early on is a huge advantage. This filter removes over 80% of the data from the query right off the top.

Pretty simple solution. Using the Filter Rows function, I am filtering down to text that begins with 2021, 2022, and 2023. This eliminates all of the years I did not want in my report while keeping the ones that did. Now, I can make the transformations I want across the rest of the query, and if absolutely necessary I can change the data to 'date' at the end. That way the query folding will not break until there's the least amount of data left possible. I hope this helps!