Troubleshooting & FAQ
The problems report editors actually hit, and what to do about them.
The calendar doesn't render
The landing page is still showing
The visual shows its landing page until Start Date is bound. Drag a date column into Start Date and the calendar draws immediately. Every other field is optional.
The grid is drawn but there are no events
Work through these in order:
- Are the dates readable? Look for a warning icon in the visual's header — see Some rows have unreadable dates.
- Is the calendar on the right period? It opens on today. If your data is historical, press ‹ to navigate, or switch to List view, which shows only days that have events.
- Is a filter emptying it? Check the filter pane, page filters, and any slicers on the page.
- Are the Start Date cells blank? Rows with a blank start date are skipped silently.
Some rows have unreadable dates
A warning icon appears in the visual's header reading Rows with unreadable dates: N. Those rows had a start or end value the visual refused to interpret. The usual culprits:
| Cause | Fix |
|---|---|
Text dates in a non-ISO format (03/09/2026) | Convert the column to Date or Date/time in Power Query. |
Excel serial numbers (46091) | Convert to a date column. |
Unix timestamps in seconds (1772064000) | Multiply by 1000 (milliseconds) or convert to a date column. |
| A numeric column bound by mistake | Bind the real date column. Numeric dates are only read as 8-digit YYYYMMDD keys. |
The warning clears itself on the next refresh once the data is fixed. See How dates are read.
Events are on the wrong days
Every multi-day event is one day short
Your end dates are inclusive ("through the 14th") but the visual is reading them as exclusive. Set Format → Calendar → End Date Interpretation to Inclusive.
Do this rather than adding a day in Power Query — the setting is applied in one place and keeps every view consistent. See End Date Interpretation.
Every multi-day event is one day too long
The mirror image: your data is exclusive (an iCal or Outlook export, an API feed) and the setting is on Inclusive. Switch it back to Exclusive (iCal).
A multi-day event only shows on its first day
The End Date field isn't bound, its value is blank on those rows, or the end is earlier than the start. An event with no usable end occupies its start day only.
Times are a few hours off
Power BI date/time values carry no time zone, and the Calendar renders exactly what's stored. If your source holds UTC timestamps, convert them to the reporting time zone in Power Query before the visual sees them.
Every event looks like an all-day event
An event is treated as all-day when its start is exactly midnight. That's what a Date column always produces. If you have times in a separate column, combine date and time into one Date/time column in Power Query.
The week starts on the wrong day
Format → Calendar → First Day of Week. It's deliberately a report setting rather than a per-viewer locale setting, so everyone sees the same grid.
Layout and density
Every day shows "+N more"
The cell can only show Max Events Per Cell events (Format → Event Display, maximum 5). In order of effectiveness: make the visual taller, switch to Week or List view for busy periods, filter the data, or raise the cap.
Events are unreadable in Quarter or Year view
Those views are density overviews. Quarter view shrinks the chips; Year view shows only a coloured dot per day. Use them as an entry point — clicking a day or a month name drills into Day or Month view.
The header takes too much room / can I hide it?
The header can't be hidden: it carries the navigation and the view selector, which are how viewers move around the calendar. In a small visual, turn off the views you don't need so the selector is narrow, and consider List view as the default.
The calendar switched itself to List view
The visual is narrower than 300 pixels, where a seven-column grid is unreadable. Widen it and your chosen view returns.
Colours and legend
The legend isn't showing
It appears only when a Category field is bound and at least one event has a category value. Also check Format → Legend → Show Legend.
A category has no colour picker
Only the first 20 categories (alphabetically) get a picker. The rest are still coloured, from the report theme palette. If you need control over all of them, group the long tail into an "Other" category upstream.
My colour choices have no effect
Three possibilities: the viewer is in high contrast mode (every colour comes from the system palette then), the events belong to a category with no picker (see above), or the category values changed — colours are stored per category name, so renaming a category starts it over with a palette colour.
Holiday colours look wrong
Holidays use their own colour (Format → Holidays → Holiday color), not the Data Colors palette, and are overridden in high contrast mode.
Interaction problems
Clicking an event doesn't filter anything
- The visual may be a dashboard tile, where Power BI disables interaction.
- The event may be a public holiday — holidays are inert by design and carry no data identity.
- The page's Edit interactions settings may exclude the target visual.
Clicking another visual doesn't change the calendar
Power BI's default interaction is highlight, which the Calendar shows the same events for. Use Format ribbon → Edit interactions and set the source visual's interaction with the Calendar to filter.
Nothing happens on hover
Tooltips are off by default. Turn on Format → Tooltips → Show tooltips. This also gates report-page tooltips — with it off, neither appears.
The "Open Link" button does nothing
The Detail URL value must be an absolute http:// or https:// address. Power BI blocks other schemes from inside a visual. Check for blank values and for links stored without their scheme (www.example.com won't open).
The view resets when the report is reopened
The current view and period are session state, not report state: the calendar always reopens on the Default View, at today. To pin a report to a specific period, filter the data to it. See What is and isn't saved.
Clicking empty space didn't clear my selection
The first click closes an open popover or "+N more" panel and keeps the selection; the next one clears it. Esc works the same way.
Holidays
A holiday is missing or on the wrong date
The built-in lists cover national/federal holidays only. Regional holidays (German Länder, Spanish comunidades, Canadian provinces, US states) aren't included, and holidays that fall at a weekend aren't shifted to the next working day.
For exact local dates, model holidays as data — one row per holiday, with its own category — and leave the built-in setting off.
Holidays don't appear in the legend and can't be clicked
By design. Holidays are background context, not data: they carry no identity to cross-filter with, so they're excluded from the legend and inert to clicks.
Performance
The calendar is slow, or events are missing in a large model
The visual receives at most 30,000 rows. Beyond that, Power BI stops sending rows and the calendar draws what it received.
A calendar is rarely readable at that volume anyway. Filter to a date range, a team or a status before the visual sees the data — a date slicer bound to the same column as Start Date is the simplest option.
Licensing
A license notification appears on the visual
The visual is unlicensed for that user. Every editor and viewer needs a license. See Licensing & support.
The notification appears even though we bought a license
- Licenses are assigned per user in the Microsoft 365 admin center — check the user has one.
- Licenses are cached for the Power BI session; sign out and back in after assigning.
- AppSource licensing doesn't work in Report Server, Embedded, Publish to web, SharePoint or national clouds — use a direct license key there.
My license key says "License verification requires HTTPS"
Key verification uses browser cryptography that only runs on secure origins. Enable HTTPS on your Power BI Report Server.
Getting more help
- Check the Formatting reference for what a setting is supposed to do.
- Email hello@chartpad.io with your Power BI version (Desktop or Service), the visual version, a screenshot, and a small sample of the data shape — that's usually enough to reproduce an issue immediately.