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baiju's avatar
baiju
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago
Solved

Cannot convert a negative text to decimal

Hi,   I am new to power bi. I have a column which have decimal values. But, the datatype is text. When I tried to convert the datatype to decimal power-bi query editors throws below error.   Data...
  • arify's avatar
    arify
    9 years ago

    I have a feeling that that "−" character isn't same as "-". As you can see, it's a bit wider. Did you get from Web.Page? Maybe you can do "Right click on columns > Replace Values" and replace "−"s with "-"s.

v-huizhn-msft's avatar
v-huizhn-msft
Microsoft Employee
9 years ago

baiju,

As I tested, PowerBI can certainly convert the text "negative numbers" into a negative number, so there's something else going on here.

 

I import the data into Power BI as following screenshot.



Please check the negative sign in the string if there is actually some kind of Unicode character, or that there's something which looks like a digit in the text but is actually a letter? Would you be able to share your data with us for further analysis?


Best Regards,
Angelia

arify's avatar
arify
Microsoft Employee
9 years ago

I have a feeling that that "−" character isn't same as "-". As you can see, it's a bit wider. Did you get from Web.Page? Maybe you can do "Right click on columns > Replace Values" and replace "−"s with "-"s.

  • rizwan_ahmed's avatar
    rizwan_ahmed
    Regular Visitor
    8 years ago

    Thanks arify,

    it worked for me as well.

     

    Kind Regards