Date Format Bug (\mmm-yyyy)

[ButtersStotch]

Hi guys,

I have a report that uses this "EndOfMonth" field, and I need it to be in MMM-yyyy format. I'm able to use this, and publish the report, happy days.

How it is supposed to be: https://imgur.com/KmyEyYB

After a few days, it becomes like this M12-2020 format, and when you download the published pbix, the format will have a rogue backslash out of nowhere. Sometimes "\MMM-yyyy", sometimes "\M\M\M-yyyy". Has anyone else seen this and found a fix? I have several reports that encounters this bug.

The Bug: https://imgur.com/Oxmq6UG

[AllisonKennedy · Accepted solution]

@ButtersStotch  I haven't seen this, but you could try converting it to Text field in Power Query so it's always exactly in format you want. Use Date.ToText() function:

Date.ToText([EOMdate], "MMM-yyyy")

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

I can confirm I've seen this several times. It's exhausting. Power BI has several really nice features, and has come on leaps and bounds recently, but bugs like this are beyond annoying - they are huge productivity soaks. The same happens on money fields - have reports formatted sensibly (in most cases for us, with 0DP) and then suddenly the 0DP is lost and they're displayed with up to nine insignificant decimal places. Makes my team look bad for no reason of theirs.

And can we *please* stop accepting workarounds to bugs in Power BI as a 'solution'. It's not a solution. The bug still exists.

Where do I get to vote on this to be fixed? 

[ButtersStotch]

I was actually surprised that this seems to happen to only a few users. I haven't seen similar bugs like this reported. Also that currency thing. It's so annoying that I need to adjust the decimal places EVERYTIME I select "$" as the format. Why would I ever need 9 decimal places on a currency column?

[ButtersStotch]

Thanks, @AllisonKennedy , I suppose that could work. I just think it's odd that a published report could change on its own, on a very specific way.

[AllisonKennedy]

You're welcome @ButtersStotch , dates and even TRUE/FALSE often change in the Power BI service. I guess it's due to updates from Microsoft and in this case possibly regional settings. Text fields are concrete, as they don't rely on custom formatting, so will never change. Unfortunately takes up a bit of space in the model, but that's what a Date table is for. 

[AllisonKennedy · Accepted solution]

@ButtersStotch  I haven't seen this, but you could try converting it to Text field in Power Query so it's always exactly in format you want. Use Date.ToText() function:

Date.ToText([EOMdate], "MMM-yyyy")