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Anam's avatar
Anam
Regular Visitor
9 years ago

String Value in Calculating Measures

Hey, I'm trying to calculate the sum of sales by using the DAX measure function. However, when I try to plot this measure to a visual like a bar chart, it gives an error and says this sum function cannot work for values of type String. What does it mean by type string value? How do I solve this?

 

Need Help

3 Replies

  • TomMartens's avatar
    TomMartens
    Super User
    9 years ago

    Hey,

     

    this is typically happen, if the data type of the column you are using in your SUM(...) function is not a numeric one.

     

    To change this, most of the times it's sufficient to go to the model ribbon

    Mark the column in the fields pane and change the data type.

    Be aware of the fact, that if you change the data type it sometimes can also affect your visuals, this is due to the default, that numeric columns are treated as continuous variables on axis. This can of course can also be changed very easily. 

     

    Sometimes it could be a little harder, due to the fact that a data quality issue sneaked into your data model and this issue implicity determined the initial data type of the column.

     

    Hope this helps

  • v-yulgu-msft's avatar
    v-yulgu-msft
    Microsoft Employee
    9 years ago

    Hi Anam,

     

    Have you resolved your problem? If so, would you please mark the helpful reply as an answer or share your solution so that it can benefit more users? If you still have any question, please feel free to ask.

     

    Thanks,
    Yuliana Gu

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    6 years ago

    You can use MAX function. It will do like this: 

     

    Category_Measure = MAX(TableName[Category])

     

    It is not the best solution, but for some situations it is possible to do 
    As a result you will get measure with categories as a strings. It should be the answer to your question