How to Set a Default Date When Using a Date Field in a LookerStudio Control

[taiga_fukagawa]

Hello, I have a question about Looker Studio as mentioned in the title.

Background:
The data source contains a field called "target_month." The "target_month" field contains monthly data as shown below:

• 2024-01-01
• 2024-02-01
• 2024-03-01
• 2024-04-01 ...

Minimum Goal:

• I want to set a specific default date.
  • Example: I want the default to be set to March 2024.

Ideal Goal:

• I want the default to be set to the previous month.
  • Example: When viewing data in October 2024, I want September 2024 to be selected by default.

Issues:

• Even if I set a fixed value like "2024-03-01" in "Default selection," it is not selected by default, and I don't understand the reason.
• I am not sure if it is possible to set a variable instead of a fixed value in the "Default selection."

Is there a way to achieve this?

[sam8]

Your minimum goal should be possible. There is probably a default selection that you can enter that would work here. As mentioned in the Drop-down list and Fixed-size list control article, the default selection has to match your data exactly. So maybe instead of "2024-03-01", it needs to be "2024-03", or even ""2024 03"?

Your ideal goal may be possible by switching to a date range control! There is an option there for "last month".

[taiga_fukagawa]

Thank you very much for your response.

It does seem that using the date range control could enable us to display data from one month ago by default. However, I am wondering if there is a way to achieve this using a Drop-down list instead.

To provide some context, our current data source is structured on a monthly basis. Because of this, we would prefer to select filters at the month level rather than by specific days.

With the date range control, filtering works from a specific date to another specific date. Given that our data source is organized by month, ideally, we would like to be able to select in the "YYYY-MM" format.

Thank you again for your support and any further guidance you can offer.