Help Please - Data Import Transformation

[GrantWilliams]

Hello - I'm trying to educate myself to switch from Excel to PowerBI for data analysis, so learning as I go along....

I'm trying to import data from an excel spreadsheet - one of the columns has data in the format of:

<number><full stop><number><full stop><number> (e.g. 2.7.8)

I need to maintain this format for analysis but when I try to import the spreadsheet it converts it to date format, and even why I try to flag it as text in Table Editor > Data Type, all it does is convert from a text to a numeric date format (e.g. 2.7.8 starts off as "2 August 2012", and when I make it text becomes "8/2/2012")

Any ideas how I fix this please so I can reference the data as 2.7.8 in power BI, as I need to do a look-up against another data source to derive which customer it is for? I cheked in Exel and the data is flagged as "General"; I tried changing it to "number" but got teh same result 

Regards

Grant (Exel Guru, noob on Power BI...)

[v-denglli-msft]

Hi @GrantWilliams ，

It looks like your problem has been solved, please mark the helpful reply and accept it as solution, it will be helpful for other members of the community who have similar problems as yours to solve it faster .
Thank you very much for your kind cooperation!

Best Regards,
Dengliang Li

[GrantWilliams · Accepted solution]

Thank you both - I removed teh transform step and now have the data I need. On to the next steps...

Grant

[Idrissshatila]

Hello @GrantWilliams ,

power query automatically create a step that changes the type, so remove the automatic step and keep it as it is.

so on the right side in power query youll see a section for applied steps and remove the change type step.

[NishPatel]

Please add ' at the beginning of your data like '2.7.8 and format it as text. In Power BI, when you import from excel go to transform data.

Click on Navigation and change the data type to Text

Delete any other change types which converts your column into date.

Close and Apply and it will stay as required.