Join us at FabCon Atlanta from March 16 - 20, 2026, for the ultimate Fabric, Power BI, AI and SQL community-led event. Save $200 with code FABCOMM.
Register now!The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now! Learn more
Hello,
I have a simple excel file with a single table that I'm trying to implement to my report. My problem is that one of the colums has number data that power bi recognises as dates.
The columns has data like 2/4, 3/4 etc. Basically it says how many tests have been done (2 out of 4, 3 out of 4 etc.).
When I import the excel to Power BI that columns shows dates, when I change the type in Power BI to number I get weird numbers like "42462" or something. How can I fix that?
Solved! Go to Solution.
@mork Go back in Excel and format the column as Fraction - it should then automatically recognize it as numbers
Look at my response here...
http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Sort-a-columns-by-the-rows/m-p/29830#U29830
Basically don't load the Excel data immediately - hit EDIT first - then in the Query Editor change the Data Type to decimal
then go ahead and load to the Data Model
let me know if this works.
Decimal number gives me an error. Only text type show the correct data. Should I keep it as text or try something else?
@mork Go back in Excel and format the column as Fraction - it should then automatically recognize it as numbers
Thanks a lot!!
The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now!
Check out the November 2025 Power BI update to learn about new features.
| User | Count |
|---|---|
| 65 | |
| 44 | |
| 40 | |
| 29 | |
| 19 |
| User | Count |
|---|---|
| 201 | |
| 126 | |
| 103 | |
| 72 | |
| 54 |