Converting funny characters such as '8.38E+14' to '838000000000000.00'

[healsio2025]

What data type should I choose in the Select tool?
I've used V_STRING AND V_WSTRING, but it didn't work well...

[alexnajm]

If you want it to be numeric, you need Fixed Decimal, Float, or Double - there is also the ToNumber() function in the Formula tool

[healsio2025]

in addition to 8.38E+14, there are also combinations of letters and numeric characters in the same field

Alteryx resulted 'null' for those super long combination of letters and numeric characters.

what data type would take both 8.38E+14 and combination of letters and numeric characters?

[alexnajm · Accepted solution]

That's a very important caveat. In that case, then you do have to use a string data type like V_WSTRING. You'd have to use some formula to take the scientific notation, convert to number, then convert back to text. Something like ToString(ToNumber([data]),2) would work, and you could make an IF statement to ensure those that aren't in scientific notation are not affected