Date slicer not showing as slider

[Anonymous]

Hi

I've moved a Date field to the a slicer in Power BI Desktop, but it doesn't implement it as as slider, but as a list of check boxes - see below.

Any ideas?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous 

It looks like your date column isn't in date format. To change it you can either edit the query and change it to a date type or use the modeling tab at the top of the page to change it to date. 

Typically date columns have a mini calendar icon in the fields pane that let you know that it's a date type. 

[Anonymous]

I actually had the same (or similar) issue. I had a Date column from a table that had a range of dates from 1/1/2020 to the current date (6/29/2020 at the time). The 'slider' control displayed as expected/intended.

I switched to using a dimDate table with a wider range of dates (12/29/2019 to 7/1/2021) and the slider disappeared and was replaced with checkboxes, but only displayed thru ~8/14/2020. This seemed to indicate that the slicer has a default configuration to switch to checkboxes after a certain number of values (~250?) are in the date list. I couldn't find a way to override the 'Fields' or 'Format' configuration panels .  But the users REALLY want the Date 'Slider' functionality.

So I decided to look into filtering the dates to a smaller set (e.g. 'today' thru 12/31/2020). I played with the 'Advanced' filtering options and settled on using the 'Relative Date' setting's 'Year' option.  After saving the Advanced filter setting I noticed the Slicer visualization had a picklist option *within* the visualization (under ellipsis '...' option) in the upper right corner in the Title area.

There were two icons/options: a 'Clear selections' option (looked like an eraser) and a 'Select the type of slicer' (down arrow/carat) option with options of 'Between', 'Before', 'After', 'List', 'Dropdown' and 'Relative Date'. I selected the 'Between' option and it automatically converted the slicer control from checkboxes to the slider control - I didn't even have to reduce/filter the number of dates!

[Anonymous]

Ah thank you so much!  I never knew about the options in the elipsis.  This was exactly what I was looking for thank you!

[bcreamer]

Same here.  The Slider only appeared when I changed the drop down top right arrow to "BETWEEN".

[Anonymous]

I'm having the same issue using between dates slicer. It works fine in desktop and dates are formatted as dates. When I publish, it changes slicer to drop down dates.

Is there something else that could cause the between slicer not show in Power BI services?

[Anonymous]

Are you using any Bookmarks by chance? I'm having the same issue, and it only seems to convert from the slider to the checkbox list when I use a bookmark. I was using the same slicer (copied and pasted) on three different pages. I thought maybe it had to do with syncing them, but I copied and pasted after recreating without syncing and they still converted to checklists after the first bookmark was selected.

Seems like a bug.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous 

Thanks Jeremy, to add to the mystery.. the between dates slicer suddenly started working. I hadn't changed anything other than refreshing it in the Power BI online...

[Anonymous]

Strange -- I didn't start having this issue until I did the April update -- not sure what I was on before -- but I've verified that the field I'm using is formatted as a date.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous 

It looks like your date column isn't in date format. To change it you can either edit the query and change it to a date type or use the modeling tab at the top of the page to change it to date. 

Typically date columns have a mini calendar icon in the fields pane that let you know that it's a date type. 

[Anonymous]

You are correct - my "Date" column looked like dates but was in fact "Text" format (Why didn't I think of that?) .

Changing it to Date format  resolved the issue

Thanks! 

[v-chuncz-msft · Accepted solution]

@Anonymous ,

Glad to hear that. You may help accept the solution above. Your contribution is highly appreciated.