Forum Discussion

rmx000000's avatar
rmx000000
New Member
8 years ago
Solved

scientific notation

Hi,

 

I have a csv file with two columns :

 

column A, column B

1.5554E-43, 4.2039E-45

 

 

Power BI assumes that both columns are strings. If I change them to number, it gives an error.

 

I want that Power BI interpret the strings as scientific notation format numbers.

 

How can I do this?

 

thank you!

  • rmx000000's avatar
    rmx000000
    8 years ago

    Yes, I found out that regional settings was the problem.

    I switched to ENglish (US) and the problem was solved.

     

    THank you anyway. 

6 Replies

  • MarcelBeug's avatar
    MarcelBeug
    Community Champion

    Probably your culture code expects decimal commas. In that case, you need to provide a culture code when transforming to number type, e.g. "en-US":

     

    = Table.TransformColumnTypes(NameOfYourPreviousStep,{{"column A", type number}, {"column B", type number}}, "en-US")

     

    This can be done by using "Using Locale":

     

    Some old screenshot

  • jthomson's avatar
    jthomson
    Solution Sage

    This might be fixed if you go into the query editor and see what automatic transformations Power BI makes when you import them - if you eliminate the step where it's thinking they're strings, then hopefully you can define your columns to be decimal numbers at the outset and have Power BI correctly interpret your data

    • rmx000000's avatar
      rmx000000
      New Member

      Yes, I found out that regional settings was the problem.

      I switched to ENglish (US) and the problem was solved.

       

      THank you anyway. 

      • v-huizhn-msft's avatar
        v-huizhn-msft
        Microsoft Employee

        Hi rmx000000,

        Congratulations, you have resolved your issue, please mark the right or helpful reply as answer, so more members like you will get help from here. Thanks for understanding.

        Best Regards,
        Angelia

  • I tried the answers in this post but still get errors after changing the language to en-US

    My numbers are in the format three digits E+single digit

    like 303 E+3

    or 97.6 E+3

    what else can I do to not get Errors displayed?

    Thanks for your help