Failed to create Timeline on Excel 2013 from SSAS 2012 Tabular Model: "We can't create a timeline for this report because it doesn't have a filed formatted as a Date"

Excel 2013 Pivot Table comes with Timeline feature which provide a visual date slicer to display data in a date range specified by users.



After a SSAS 2012 Tabular Model was built and deployed, which included a time dimension table, when you attempt to create a Timline but Excel failed the operation with the following error message:  "We can't create a timeline for this report because it doesn't have a filed formatted as a Date"

 

Although a time dimension was built and join within SSAS Tabular Model, the dimension table still need to be set as Date table.
1. Open the SSAS Tabular Model  in Visual Studio Development mode
2. Select the time dimension table, go to Table from menu bar.
3. Select Date, select mark as date table.

 
4. need to specify a primary key of the time table. then OK
5. Process, then redeploy the Tabular Model
6. Test it from Excel 2013 by create a Timeline.

 
For detail to how to multiselect dates in Excel 2013, please check out this web site:
http://thomasivarssonmalmo.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/multiselecting-dates-in-excel-2013-on-top-of-ssasbism-multidimensional/
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