How to format grouped date fields to avoid sorting issues

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
1

A simple scenario, I would like to group by a date field descending, perfect, but I don’t want to display the full date in the group header, fine I can do a virtual column, except… the sorting will break because now it’s sorted not as date anymore but by approximate numeric values.

For the instance this sorts perfect as Date:
11/2/2023
10/15/2023

But if I need to format the virtual field as “DD/YY” it will break the descending order, oct 15th will now be on top of nov 2nd:
15/23
2/23

That’s due to the fact that it is not a date anymore and the month portion is lost.
Is there a way of sorting this out or we are limited to using virtual columns with carefully crafted date formats that when converted to numbers still sort meaninfully?

1 Like
2

When it’s a text, you need to use format something like 2023-01-28 or 2023-01.

3

Gotcha, so it really to be formatted in a specific way, there is no current elegant solution to display an actual date column with a custom format.

4

That’s true.