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chmoon's avatar
chmoon
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago
Solved

Removing Numbers

I was wondering if anyone knew of a more elgant way to remove numbers from a string. I realized that Power BI does not support regular expressions. I know I could use R or another method to remove, b...
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  • MarcelBeug's avatar
    MarcelBeug
    9 years ago

    In the Query Editor you can either add a column with formula:

     

    = Text.Combine(List.RemoveItems(Text.ToList([TextWithDigits]),{"0".."9"}))

    Or transform the column: first choose Transform - Clean (or some other option) and then adjust the code in the formula bar to:

     

     

    = Table.TransformColumns(PreviousStep,{{"TextWithDigits", each Text.Combine(List.RemoveItems(Text.ToList(_),{"0".."9"}))}})

    the adjustment is the part starting with "each".

     

MarcelBeug's avatar
MarcelBeug
Community Champion
9 years ago

Thanks for kudos, guys, but - shame on me :smileyembarrassed: - today I was triggered by a question from MattAllington on MrExcel.com involving Text.Remove, which can be used instead of my creative formula, which can be simply replaced by:

 

Text.Remove([TextWithDigits],{"0".."9"})

 

 

 

Sean's avatar
Sean
Community Champion
9 years ago

MarcelBeug  Thanks for the Update!

 

I will actually use this in place of Step 2 here

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/split-multiple-column-values-into-multiple-rows/m-p/144081#M62155

This Step 2 seems to remove everything after a number - so if a cell starts with a number it will be left empty

= Table.TransformColumns(#"Unpivoted Other Columns", {{"Attribute", each Text.Start(_, Text.PositionOfAny(_,Text.ToList("0123456789"))), type text}})