How to Select Specific Rows and Columns to Appear in a Date/Time Table

This article describes how to go from a table with an aggregated Date/Time variable...

...to a table that shows only selected date rows or columns:

Requirements

A table with an aggregated Date/Time variable in either the rows or columns. In this example, we are displaying the first 3 dates only and keeping only the Coke brands.

Method - Customize the labels and categories of your Date/Time variable

See: Customize the labels and categories of your Date/Time variable.

1. Select your Date/Time variable set in the Data sources menu. 
2. OPTIONAL: In Documents created prior to May 2026, go to Properties and click Upgrade to enable category customization.
3. Select your table.
4. Select rows you wish to hide, right-click > Hide.
   

For more details, see: How to Configure a Date/Time Variable > Customize the labels and categories of your Date/Time variable.

Method - Change the start/end of your dates (Date Range)

Alternatively, you can choose Date Range and specify the Start date and End date so that only rows with dates falling between these dates will appear in the output table. 

1. Select your Date/Time variable set in the Data sources menu. 
2. In Properties >  Attributes, click on Date/Time Aggregation.
3. Set Period type to Date Range.
4. Select the start date in the From menu. 
5. Select the end date in the To menu.
6. Select OK. 
   

For more details, see: How to Configure a Date/Time Variable > Change the start/end of your dates (Date Range).

Method - using Table > Select

1. Select your table and from the toolbar, go to Table > Select.

2. In Properties, change Select rows by to First date-time periods.

3. Set Date-time period using the available units, e.g., Year, Month, Quarter, and so on. Here, we will use Quarter.

4. OPTIONAL: First date-time periods to select will default to 1, but you can change this if required. This option specifies the number of periods from the first date in the table to include.

Note, there are multiple options here depending on how you define the periods. For example, 1 Quarter will be equivalent to 3 Months. You could also get the same result using a range if we entered 2019-01-01 for the start date and 2019-03-01 as the end date.

5. OPTIONAL: Untick Calendar periods if you wish your date-time periods to be counted relative to the first date in the table. If this is checked, the date-time periods selected will be relative to the calendar, whereby the first quarter is always January - March.

6. OPTIONAL: Choose the appropriate Select columns by option. Here, we will select Typing labels to include and type the column labels we want to include i.e., Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coke Zero. You can also make this more dynamic by selecting Control or output from Page(s) and then selecting the control you wish to use to select the columns to show. 

Next

How to Select Specific Rows and Columns to Appear in a Table

How to Switch Between Tables via a Control Box