Timeline Slicer in Excel 2013 error

[Gra06021]

I keep getting the error: "We can't create a Timeline for the report because it doesn't have a field formatted as Date". I thought that this must just be a simple formatting issue and so I went back and took my column with the dates and formatted it as "Short Date", and got the same error. I formatted it as "Long Date" and got the same error. In this column I only have the month listed. Do you know if I need to put in the full date (i.e. 7/8/2014) instead of just the month (i.e. "July")? Has anyone run into this problem before and if so what do I need to do to correct it?

Thanks in advance to all you amazing Mr. Excel gurus!

Gray

 

[J Man]

I keep getting the error: "We can't create a Timeline for the report because it doesn't have a field formatted as Date". I thought that this must just be a simple formatting issue and so I went back and took my column with the dates and formatted it as "Short Date", and got the same error. I formatted it as "Long Date" and got the same error. In this column I only have the month listed. Do you know if I need to put in the full date (i.e. 7/8/2014) instead of just the month (i.e. "July")? Has anyone run into this problem before and if so what do I need to do to correct it?

Thanks in advance to all you amazing Mr. Excel gurus!

Gray

Hi Gray,

Was just wondering if you was able to resolve the above problem and if you did how you resolved the issues

 

[Gra06021]

I don't think that I was ever able to really get this resolved. It was a while back now, but if I remember correctly I ended up having to go through it all and recreate my date column with it formatted correctly (using 1/1/2016 versus "January") from the beginning. It was a really pain as the spreadsheet I was using had a several thousand rows. Maybe you can do the same? Perhaps use the flash fill function to speed things up?

 

[Luis Callejas]

I have a table of 340 lines consisting of 3 fields, including a date field. Using a pivot table I can use a Timeline slicer to view the information I want according to the dates I want. The Timeline option is available with 345 records, but when I add 1 or more records, the option is no longer available.
What can be done to view hundreds or thousands of records?

Thanks for your help in advance!

 

[Gra06021]

Do you really want to see 345 items in a slicer? Could you group your dates into months or years so that there are less of them and then use a slicer on those? Perhaps even have multiple slicers... spilt your dates into three columns, one for years, months and days and then put three slicers in. This would allow you to quickly get to the date you want.

I think if you have 345 items in a slicer you might as well just filter the pivot table... it'll be as quick as anything.

Also, if this doesn't help you may want to start your own thread as it will get seen and addressed by the whole community and not just my little thread

Good luck!