Date Problems

[PBailey]

I am new to Looker Studio....very new. With that out of the way, here is my situation. 

I have downloaded real estate sales data with one column for the sales date. The sales date for the first three rows appear as '36161, 36162, 36164' and so forth for the remaining rows. This is the data that I originally uploaded. However, the Time Series chart would not work and I could not format the date using a Parse_Date. 

So, I changed the format for the column to a date format. The sales date for the first three rows appear as ' 1999-01-01, 1999-01-02, 1999-01-04.' I tried to Reconnect the data without success. I removed the old file and add the new saved file with the changed date format. However, when I go to Data Preview in the Edit section under Manage Added Data Sources, the date is still '36161, 36162, 36164.'  

This is the second data file that I have tried to use to get a Time Series chart to count the number of sales each month in the past. I was able to get the Time Series chart to show the Record Count for each day of sales in the past but that did not look helpful at all. 

Would you have any suggestions on how to get the Time Series chart to show the data in a manner that I would like. 

This is my first post. I have been trying to figure this out over the last 4 days and figured I'd try here. Thank you.

[阿泰]

Hello, is your date format like this?

I imported the date data into Looker Studio, and it worked fine. I think your raw data might be misformatted as a string or another type, which is why Looker Studio isn't displaying it correctly.

[PBailey]

Thank you for the consideration.

When I go into 'Resources>Manage added data sources,' then into the Excel data set and chose 'Data Preview,' I see the date column to look like

When I look at the date data formatted as a 'Date' in the Excel file it looks like this

But appears in the formula bar as 

Formatted as a 'General' number, it looks like this

All the while when I add the Excel file with the Sale Date as a 'Date,' the format in Looker appears as a 'General' number from Excel, as seen below.

[阿泰]

I tried to reproduce your issue.

Here's the first one: if my Excel file has data in the "date" format and I import it into Looker Studio, it appears correctly as a date. See the screenshot:

And when I set the date type as "regular", it turns into a plain number. It also gets messed up in Looker Studio. Please take a look.

[PBailey]

That helps to get the dates to appear in a table and even a Time series chart. 

I have tried both to 'drill up' and 'drill down' into a 'Year Month' but get an error. Any thoughts on how to get this feature to work? I am more interested in seeing data about a month more so than a particular day. 

Thank you for your assistance. 

[PBailey]

I have tried both to 'drill up' and 'drill down' into a 'Year Month' but get an error. Any thoughts on how to get this feature to work? I am more interested in seeing data about a month more so than a particular day. 

[PBailey]

I am able to get the Drill down/up to work when I use data from Google Sheets. However, it does not recognize the Drill down/up into year or year/month when using data from Excel. Getting the large amount of data into Sheets to use is cumbersome. I will look for an alternative. 

[阿泰]

Hello, sorry for the late reply. I believe the issue may be due to differences in data formats between Excel and the Google Sheets connector in the backend system. That could be why you're encountering an error in Microsoft Excel, even when using the same data and data types.

[PBailey]

I think that may be the case. Everything seems to be working smoothly with Google Sheets holding the data. I have minimal data at this point but enough to make it slower in Sheets than Excel. With additional data in the future, Sheets may not work. Any suggestions for additional options to hold data for Looker to use? I simply am just downloading a batch of data into a CSV and placing it in a Sheet for Looker to use. 

[阿泰]

Could you share a sample of the CSV file so I can check whether it’s possible to import into Looker Studio? If you can, please send the CSV file to this email:

<PII Removed by Staff>

Another solution: if your real estate system supports pulling data via API, you can use Google Sheets with Apps Script to import the data directly and automatically. GPT can help you handle that perfectly.