Please Help: change data type from text to decimal number

[janez599]

Hi there, I am new to Excel and Power BI Desktop. I am using a text file with many columns to analyze our website traffic. One of the columns is click-through rate was imported as a text. I wanted that changed to a Fixed Decimal Number. However, every time I changed the data type from text to decimal number, every row of this column returned with "Error". When I click on the Error to see what they problem is, I receive this notice: DataFormat.Error: We couldn't convert to Number. Details: 7.81% What shall I do to convert the data type properly? Thanks a lot in advance. Jane

[Daniil · Accepted solution]

There are several steps involved:

1. Right-click the column, select Replace Values...
   
   
   
2. Replace the % symbol with nothing
   
   
   
3. Change Type to Fixed Decimal Number
   
   
   
4. Since this is a percentage, you need to divide by 100
   
   
   
5. Finally, you get the desired result
   

[Kapilkumar]

i have data of sales  in the format let say

$1,00,12,223.00

$2,99,23,223.00 

 and so on of 700 rows and whenever i load the data and see it in query exditor then it showing its data type as ABC text 

i tried few times but could not able to change it 

please help!

@Daniil 

@janez599 

@PowerBI 

[janez599]

Thanks a lot Daniil for your detailed instruction!