Add Column for Name of Month

[BillyRaygun]

Good Afternoon Community,

I monitor activity on a monthly basis. My Excel file does not have a column dedicated for month name. As I get more data each month, I will need to know the name of the month. Which is the better workflow, add this column in Excel, or in Power Query Editor?

Experimenting on my own, just to see what happens, I added a Custom Column in Power Query Editor:

D= Table.AddColumn(#"Changed Type", "Custom", each Date.MonthName) - results produce "Function" in each row.

I'm probably overcomplicating this, but I would think this should be a very simple column to add? Am I missing a step in my own workflow?

Best Regards,

[Syndicate_Admin]

Good afternoon I was very useful your solution, however, when I put the month in the table it organizes it in alphabetical order, and when I try to sort it by month number it does not appear as in its images.

I appreciate very much if you can help 🙂 me

[BillyRaygun]

Thank you @TomMartens , @AlB 

I'll continue to push forward. I appreciate the support.

Best Regards,

[Sumanth_23]

hi @BillyRaygun - Another approach is to get the data into the model and then create a custom column in the data model

Full month name: Month Name = FORMAT('Calendar'[Date], "mmmm")

Short month name: Short Month Name = FORMAT('Calendar'[Date], "mmm")

Also you would need to sort the new column using "Month Number" to view the months in the correct order

Please mark the post as a solution and provide a 👍 if my comment helped with solving your issue. Thanks!

[AlB]

Hi @BillyRaygun 

The part after the "each" is what goes into each row of  the new column. You are entering Date.MonthName, which is a function

You need something like

D= Table.AddColumn(#"Changed Type", "Custom", each Date.MonthName([Date]))

Please mark the question solved when done and consider giving kudos if posts are helpful.

Contact me privately for support with any larger-scale BI needs, tutoring, etc.

Cheers 

[TomMartens]

Hey @BillyRaygun ,

you have to pass a date into the function, the function has 2 parameters, the 2nd is optional.

Something like this:

Date.MonthName([columnname])

Or something like this:

Date.MonthName(DateTime.LocalNow())

You have to be aware that the Power BI Service is returning UTC time by default.

Regards,

Tom