How to handle data over time without a date column?

Question

I have a dataset which has many columns listing multiple years worth of values, example:

Country	2020 Rank X	2020 Rank Y	2021 Rank X
EU	1	2	3
USA	2	3	4

Etc. Each year has about 6 values for each country and there is 4 years of data, approx 160 rows.

My problem is when attempting to display over time data, there is no functioning "year" column or any data Power BI recognises as a date. How do i convert from the year info in the column name to use-able/able to be filtered year information?

Answer 1

you should unpivot and pivot again on the Power Query side. then you can use DATE(<year>, <month>, <day>) on the powerbi side...

try:

let
    Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45Wcg1VUNJRMgQRRiDCWClWJ1opNNgRIQIiTJRiYwE=", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [Country = _t, #"2020 Rank X" = _t, #"2020 Rank Y" = _t, #"2021 Rank X" = _t]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"Country", type text}, {"2020 Rank X", Int64.Type}, {"2020 Rank Y", Int64.Type}, {"2021 Rank X", Int64.Type}}),
    #"Unpivoted Other Columns" = Table.UnpivotOtherColumns(#"Changed Type", {"Country"}, "Attribute", "Value"),
    #"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(#"Unpivoted Other Columns", "Year", each Text.Start([Attribute],4)),
    #"Changed Type1" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Added Custom",{{"Year", type date}}),
    #"Pivoted Column" = Table.Pivot(#"Changed Type1", List.Distinct(#"Changed Type1"[Attribute]), "Attribute", "Value")
in
    #"Pivoted Column"