How to Order Bar Chart in Power BI

A Power BI bar chart is one of the clearest ways to compare values, but it loses its power if the bars are out of order. Seeing your months sorted alphabetically (April, August, December...) instead of chronologically is a classic Power BI problem that can make your report confusing. This article will walk you through exactly how to order your bar charts correctly, from basic value sorting to creating custom chronological or categorical orders.

Why Correct Bar Chart Sorting is So Important

Sorting isn't just about making things look tidy, it's about telling a clear story with your data. A well-sorted chart helps your audience grasp the main message in seconds. When you arrange your data intentionally, patterns and insights become immediately obvious.

• Identifying Top Performers: Sorting a sales chart from highest to lowest instantly reveals your best-selling products or top-performing sales reps.
• Tracking Trends Over Time: A chart showing website traffic per month is only useful if it’s sorted chronologically (January, February, March...). This allows you to spot seasonality and growth trends.
• Highlighting Priorities: When visualizing project tasks, ordering them by priority level ("High," "Medium," "Low") helps the team focus on what matters most.

An unsorted or incorrectly sorted chart forces the viewer to work harder to find the message. By taking control of the sort order, you make your reports more professional, intuitive, and impactful.

The Easiest Fix: Sorting by a Value (Ascending or Descending)

Let's start with the most common scenario: you have a bar chart and you want to order it from the largest bar to the smallest, or vice versa. Power BI makes this simple.

Imagine you have a simple bar chart showing "Total Sales" by "Product Category." By default, Power BI might sort the category names alphabetically (e.g., Accessories, Bikes, Clothing).

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Click on the bar chart visual in your Power BI report to select it.
2. Hover over the top-right corner of the visual until you see the header icons appear.
3. Click the ellipsis (…) for "More options."
4. Hover over "Sort by." Here you'll see a list of the fields being used in your chart (e.g., "Product Category" and "Total Sales").
5. Select the field you want to sort by. In this case, you'd choose "Total Sales".
6. Once selected, go back to the same menu (… > "Sort by"). You'll now see new options: "Sort ascending" and "Sort descending."
7. Click "Sort descending" to order the bars from highest sales to lowest, or "Sort ascending" to do the opposite.

That’s it! Your chart is now instantly reordered to show your top-performing categories first, making the key insight much easier to spot.

Custom Sorting: How to Order Months Chronologically

The most common custom sorting challenge in Power BI is getting chronological order right. You want your chart to show January, then February, then March - not the alphabetical default. The solution is to use Power BI’s “Sort by Column” feature. This lets you define a specific order for a column based on the values in another column.

The key is to have two columns in your data model:

• One with the text you want to display (e.g., "January").
• One with a number that represents the correct order (e.g., 1).

Let's walk through the full process.

Step 1: Make Sure Your Data is Ready

First, you need a "helper" column that defines the numerical order. If you're working with dates, you probably have a date table. If not, you can easily add one. Make sure your date table has a column for the month name (e.g., "MonthName") and a column for the month number of the year (e.g., "MonthNumberOfYear").

If you don't have a month number column, you can create one quickly using DAX.

1. Navigate to the Data view (the table icon) on the left-hand pane in Power BI.
2. Select the table containing your date data.
3. In the "Table tools" ribbon at the top, click "New column."
4. Enter the following DAX formula and press Enter:

Month Number = FORMAT('YourDateTable'[Date], "M")

Note: This formula creates a column with the corresponding month number (1 for January, 2 for February, etc.). Just replace 'YourDateTable'[Date] with your actual date column. Make sure the new column’s data type is set to "Whole Number."

Step 2: Apply the "Sort by Column" Rule

Now you need to tell Power BI that the "MonthName" column should be sorted using the "Month Number" column you just created.

1. While still in the Data view, find and select the column you want to sort - in this case, your "MonthName" column. Don't select the "Month Number" column, select the one with the text labels.
2. With that column highlighted, the "Column tools" ribbon will appear at the top.
3. In the "Sorting" section of the ribbon, click the "Sort by Column" button.
4. A dropdown list will appear with all the other columns in your table. Select your helper column: "Month Number."

Power BI will take a moment to process. You won't see any immediate change in the data table itself, but a new sorting rule has now been embedded in your data model.

Step 3: Refresh Your Chart

1. Go back to the Report view (the bar chart icon).
2. Select your bar chart.
3. Go to the "More options" (… ) menu again.
4. Hover over "Sort by" and this time, select your month name column (e.g., "MonthName"). Be sure "Sort ascending" is also checked here.

Your bar chart axis will now magically reorder itself chronologically! It’s displaying the month names, but sorting them based on the hidden month numbers.

Advanced Custom Sorting Scenarios

This same "Sort by Column" logic can be applied to many other scenarios beyond dates.

1. Sorting Survey Responses or Priority Levels

Imagine you have survey results with ratings like "Excellent," "Good," "Fair," and "Poor." Alphabetically, this would be sorted as "Excellent," "Fair," "Good," "Poor," which makes no sense. You need to define a logical order.

Method 1: Using "Enter Data"

1. Go to the "Home" ribbon and click "Enter Data."
2. Create a small two-column table. Name the first column "Rating" and the second "Sort Order."
3. Manually enter your categories and their desired order:

1. Give the table a name, like "Rating Sort Order," and click "Load."
2. Go to the Model view, find your new table, and create a relationship between the "Rating" column in your main data table and the "Rating" column in your new sort table.
3. Finally, use the "Sort by Column" feature on the "Rating" column in your new sort table, telling it to sort by the "Sort Order" column. Now, whenever you use the "Rating" field from this new table in a chart, it will appear in the correct order.

Method 2: Using a DAX Calculated Column

If you don’t want to create a separate table, you can add a calculated column to your main data table using a SWITCH() function.

1. In the Data view, select your main data table and click "New column."
2. Enter a DAX formula to assign a number to each category:

Rating Sort Order = 
SWITCH(TRUE(),
'SurveyData'[Rating] = "Excellent", 1,
'SurveyData'[Rating] = "Good", 2,
'SurveyData'[Rating] = "Fair", 3,
'SurveyData'[Rating] = "Poor", 4,
5)

1. Then, select your "Rating" column and use the "Sort by Column" feature to sort it by your newly created "Rating Sort Order" column.

Common Problems and Quick Fixes

• "Sort by Column" is Grayed Out: This usually happens if there isn’t a one-to-one relationship between the two columns. For example, if the value "January" in your text column were mapped to both month number 1 and 2 in your sort column, Power BI wouldn't know which order to use. Double-check your helper column to ensure each text value has only one corresponding sort number.
• My Chart Didn’t Change: After setting the sort rule in the Data view, you still have to tell the specific chart how to sort. Go back to the visual's ellipsis (…) menu, select "Sort by," and choose the categorical column (e.g., "MonthName"). The chart will then use the rule you just defined.
• I Can't Find My Column in the Menu: Make sure you are in the Data view and you've selected the text column you want to display on the chart before going to the "Column tools" ribbon.

Final Thoughts

Mastering how to sort a bar chart is a fundamental skill that elevates your Power BI reports from simple data dumps to clear, insightful stories. By moving beyond the default sort and using the "Sort by Column" feature, you can organize your data to reveal trends, highlight top performers, and communicate your message effectively.

We know that spending time wrestling with formatting options is frustrating when all you want are answers from your data. The goal is to get to insights faster. At Graphed , we built our tool to eliminate that friction completely. Instead of clicking through menus to fix sort orders, you can simply ask, "Show me last quarter's revenue by month in a bar chart, sorted chronologically," and the perfectly sorted chart appears instantly, pulling live data from your connected sources.