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BUG - Power BI Online Differing from Desktop

Hello all! So after a month of headache I have finally found the issue causing one of my reports to "break" when refreshing online. Everything looked as it should and refreshed correctly in desktop, but the refreshes online turned up differently. The problem is the data source I am querying from (Business Central) outputs 1/1/0001 in place of blank dates. Desktop reads these and displays them as blank values, so DAX expressions using "ISBLANK()" work on them. However, the web service does not read these as blank so these measures did the opposite of what their intent was. Would be great to make the treatment of 1/1/0001 consistent across both platforms to avoid future confusion. Thanks!

 

Update: Steps to recreate

Enter data with a 1/1/0001:

Step 1.PNG

Change type to date:

Step 2.PNG

Close and apply:

Step 4.PNG

Create a measure using some form of "ISBLANK()":

Step 5.PNG

Display measure:

Step 6.PNG

Publish:

Step 7.PNG

Refresh online:

Step 8.PNG

Resulting measure differs from desktop version:

Step 9.PNG

 

While I get there is a super easy one-line fix (adding a replace 1/1/0001 with "null" step in power query) the issue is for users who encounter this but don't know what the problem is (like me). I think in general the expectation is that if I load something in desktop, this is how it will load online, and it is very confusing when it doesn't.

Status: New
Comments
v-lili6-msft
Community Support

hi  @Anonymous 

I have reported this issue internally, ICM:216820658

will update here once I get any information.

 

Regards,

Lin

v-lili6-msft
Community Support

HI

I get this from pg:

This appears to be a bug. I've opened a bug to track this: Date 1/1/0001 shows up as blank in Desktop but 12/30/1899 in PBI service

As a workaround, always use null to avoid the ambiguity

 

There is no ETA for this bug for now.

 

Regards,

Lin