Unable to transform Month and Year from a text field to date field

[newuser101]

When importing my data it has identified my date field as a text field. The option to transform my data from text to date seems to be greyed out and as a result my trend lines are not working correctly (alphabetical rather than chronological.)

Any idea how to fix this/why this is happening?

[v-xiaosun-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @newuser101 ,

If the "Month" and "Year" are separate columns, it will show as "text" and "whole number" in Power BI Desktop. And you can't convert them into a DATE type or use FORMAT function to change the type. It may show an "error". 

   

If you have at least two parameters such as month-year, you can convert it to DATE type.

You can reference the following document.

Data types in Power BI Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ xiaosun

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[timg]

Hi,

Can you check whether the datatype is set to "whole number"? This could be the issue.

Best regards,

Tim