Sorting by Month Names in Power BI

  • Article

How do I sort by month number instead of alphabetically by month name in Power BI?

As I continue to work with customers to develop Power BI dashboards, this topic of sorting month columns comes up quite often. There are a few great threads and blog entries with instructions, but the following screenshots and steps seem to be working well for my customers, so I thought it might make for a nice blog entry.

This “Sort by Column” concept can be applied to sorting other columns as well, but the application for month names / month number is the majority case that I’ve seen.

Steps:

  1. Add a new column that represents the intended sort order (ex: Jan = 1, Feb =2). This can be a calculated column using the MONTH() or FORMAT() function to apply to a date column or manually created. You can also use this if your organization uses a different fiscal year than the standard calendar year.
  2. On the fields pane, select the Month column, navigate to the Modeling tab, click "Sort by Column", and update the sort to select the SortNumber column created in step #1. Tip: Make sure your new column is an integer/whole number, so the sorting is numeric.
  3. Add your visuals to see the sort order reflected as intended.

Power BI Sort By Month Name

The .pbix file is available for download here.

Thanks,
Sam Lester (MSFT)