How to add a Relative Date Slicer in Power BI

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How to add a Relative Date Slicer in Power BI
How to add a Relative Date Slicer in Power BI

Posted by Sam Lowrie on 12 June 2026

In this blog

Creating the visual
Using the relative date slicer

Power BI has an easily overlooked slicer option: the Relative Date slicer.

This blog will cover how to create one and explain the basic options available.

Relative Date slicers are perfect for filtering data within a specified period relative to a fixed point in time.

Creating the visual

To use a relative date slicer, your data model needs a column with the Date data type (or the Date/Time data type).

Simple model with dates and transational information

Here, the SaleDate column stores the dates on which transactions took place.

To create a relative date slicer, first add a standard slicer visual to your report.

Adding a basic slicer from the visualizations pane

Insert a slicer in the usual way.

Drag the date column into the slicer's Field bucket.

Adding a date into the slicer gives a slider by default

By default, this creates a date range slider, allowing users to select dates between two points.

To convert the slicer into a relative date slicer, in the Format your visual pane, navigate to Slicer settings | Options | Style and choose Relative Date.

Changing the default between slicer into a relative date slicer

Dates can also be displayed using Tile or Vertical List slicers, although these tend to take up more space.

Using the relative date slicer

To use the slicer you need to set the range of dates you're interested in. The Relative Date slicer provides three comparison options for dates:

Last for previous periods
Next for future periods
This for the current period

Choosing the direction of date movement as Last

Last is likely to be the option people use most often.

Next you can choose the type of interval. The first unit available is Days, which moves back a specified number of days.

Setting the time period of the date slicer

For example, selecting Last 10 Days compares data from today back 10 days.

At the time of writing, this returns the 10 days prior to 12 June 2026.

This option includes the current date.

The Months option works in the same way, moving back the specified number of months from the current date.

Returning just the months back from today

12th June 2025 - 10 months = 13 August 2025

Some interval options include the word (Calendar) in their name. These options behave differently: rather than counting backwards from the current date, they return only complete periods.

May 2026 - 10 months = August 2025

If you're not in the US, beware that the Weeks (Calendar) option assumes that a week begins on Sunday.

The week is defined as Sunday to Saturday!

A useful visual that is worth the effort in this owl's opinion!

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You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

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