# Have Months displayed in chronological order

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346
**Category:** Kibana
**Created:** [October 24, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346 "2022-10-24T18:24:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![wido](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@wido](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wido)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2022, 6:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/1 "2022-10-24T18:24:23Z")

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Hi there!  
We are indexing data in ES to create dashboards using Kibana.  
There is a field named `Month` that contains the names of the months indexed as strings to both `text` and `keyword` data types. Each month is represented by its full name, January, February and so on.  
When want to order the data by month, the visualizations display the months in alphabetical order (April, February, January, etc) rather than in chronological order (January, February, March, etc).  
Would it be possible to have the Month field appear chronologically rather than in alphabetical order?  
Thanks!

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### Author: ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2022, 6:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/2 "2022-10-24T18:36:06Z")

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Hi @wido Welcome to the Community

What visualization are you using on the dashboard?

Is there a timestamp field? or Just the Month in name?

Can you show us a sample of your data and what you want to show?

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### Author: ![wido](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@wido](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wido)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2022, 6:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/3 "2022-10-24T18:55:55Z")

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Absolutely!  
Histograms, Heatmaps, Trend lines.  
There is a timestamp field. I am using Logstash to extract the full name out of it using a ruby filter.  
The sample of the data would be:  
`{"log_timestamp": "2022-06-06T12:01:23.478000Z", "month_full_name": "June", "hostname": "appliance_001", "os_name": "Windows 12"}`  
Lets sat that I want to display the amount of appliances by month in a histogram.  
I tried to use the month option as the date-type histogram filter but it shows the month numbers instead of the month names like I need.

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### Author: ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2022, 7:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/4 "2022-10-24T19:16:24Z")

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So for most things you would use the timestamp for the Histograms and Buckets and sort by that and then just add the Month Column for Display and hide the timefield etc... ...

Are you using Lens?

Show Me what you are doing with a couple screen shots...

I suspect you have not created a mapping so that would probably help to...

Or see if you can follow this.

Lens -\> Table

Rows  
Date Histogram -\> Interval Month \> Hide Column  
Month  
Appliance Type

Metric  
Count  
Sum of Sales etc

 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 12.14.05 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/6/f/6f0a6c9913ef1fc85196e91b5c359ca7cd0d8228.jpeg)

I don't have a month

![Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 12.14.10 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/7/7/775959cb4b350ece720fda6b1b88bfe525dacd79.png)

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### Author: ![wido](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@wido](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wido)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 2:19am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/5 "2022-10-25T02:19:18Z")

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I am using lens.  
I am using dynamic mappings  
Attaching some screenshots with test data and the visualizations I am working with.  
One case using the timestamp field with a month for the minimum time interval, another sample having the month in the horizontal axis, you can see that the only available options are count by or alphabetical. The last one is sort of ridiculous combination of both.

 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 23.10.40](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/5/9/59054de2dc4cb009956ad5a9576ea96a64147b97.png)  
 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 23.11.29](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/5/d/5d37a2470398479cf9d7151a3d0b6fe3b0acc5a0.png)  
 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 23.14.13](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/a/9/a905e854acf814abc769a40ce86dbad35864aeeb.png)

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![stephenb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/stephenb/32/40856_2.png) [@stephenb](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/stephenb)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 4:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/6 "2022-10-25T04:41:09Z")

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What Version are you on?

My Bar Chart using Months..... just using the normal settings (I don't have a lot of old data but see the months)

 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-24 at 9.39.45 PM](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/c/8/c8ef3f6d3579378d4d8b831f4d33147eaa2ac8a0.jpeg)

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![wido](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@wido](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wido)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 1:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/7 "2022-10-25T13:21:55Z")

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Im in version 7.17.5.  
The problem is the version. Tried the same data using v8 and I was able to get the data segregated by month with their name displayed. Just like I need.  
I guess the solution is to update.

 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-25 at 11.06.47](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/d/c/dc1607c38fa853ab5c52ad64e01b06182cd405ee.png)

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### Author: ![wido](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90ced4/32.png) [@wido](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/wido)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2022, 11:59am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/have-months-displayed-in-chronological-order/317346/8 "2022-10-28T11:59:02Z")

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I was able to solve this issue by updating Kibana as well as the rest of the components of the Elastic stack
