Power BI Date Parsing

Question

I'm loading a CSV datafile into Power BI web version that includes a date field in the format and data like this:

2013-08-07 16:32:35,Test,Test

This results in Power BI creating some additional columns for Month, Year, and day that greatly help in summarizing the data.

When I load the same CSV file into Power BI Desktop, it does NOT create the additional columns of helpful data.

Is there a way to tell Power BI Desktop to do this, or create the same manually? Am I missing some critical piece of date formatting documentation?

Answer 1

FWIW I don't get the same behaviour loading a CSV file into the Power BI Web service - I only see the original columns in text form.

Anyway you can add those columns manually in Power BI Desktop, using the Edit Queries window. Within that window, select your source column (e.g. "closed"), then go to the Add Column ribbon and choose from the menu under the Date button. For example clicking Date / Year / Year will add a "Year" column with the year portion of the "closed" date.

You will need to rename columns manually to match your example above. When you are done, go back to the Home ribbon and click Close & Apply to update your model.