Changing a column from Any data type to decimal

[J0hNN13]

Hi, community.

I am new to this community and Power BI Desktop but have built a basic dashboard successfully through the help of some online resources.  I am also unfamiliar with DAX.

I have imported Excel data into Power BI, but I noticed that by default, Power BI puts certain values in columns with Data Type as "Any" by default.

In the first screenshot below, is an example of my data in such a column.  One value is a whole number, the other is a decimal number.  The null value is not a problem for me and thus, not applicable in this issue.  In the second screenshot, I always receive an Error on the decimal value, when changing the data type to decimal, or Whole Number.  I need both numbers in the same column, rounded to one decimal. Can you please guide me on how I can achieve this?

Thank you in advance

[FarhanAhmed · Accepted solution]

I think you need to check regional setting of your machine ..

[FarhanAhmed]

Can you please click on the error to see the details and also share with us

Also make sure that there are no "Leading/Trailing" spaces in your numbers causing your data to become Text. therefore try to Clean and Trim the data before changing the data type of it by right click on the column and perform such operations.

[J0hNN13]

Hi @FarhanAhmed,

Thank you for your response.

On your first request, see the error details below when I try to change the data type to Decimal Number:

Error returned when changing data type from "Any" to "Decimal Number'"

I am not familiar with "Leading/Trailing" spaces, but I did try your suggested fix.  After applying both "Trim" and "Clean" options, the data type changed to "Text" by default. See below.

Data Type = "Text" after trim and clean

When I then change the data type to "Decimal Number", I receive the same error as above.  See below:

Error returned after Decimal Type

What did I miss?

[FarhanAhmed · Accepted solution]

I think you need to check regional setting of your machine ..

[J0hNN13 · Accepted solution]

@FarhanAhmed, thank you for the advice.  I tried getting my regional computer settings sorted, to no avail. However, I found a workaround by using the locale function with the data type. This solved my problem. 

[J0hNN13]

Okay, what should it be if not my locale?