How to Change Data Type in Power BI

Updated on:

May 12, 2026

By:

Use this interactive demo to learn how to convert column data types in Power Query Editor.

Quick summary

Changing a data type in Power BI is done through the Power Query Editor, where you can select any column and reassign its type in just a few clicks. This ensures your data is correctly formatted for accurate calculations, visualizations, and reporting.

Steps

Click on the visual table in your Power BI report canvas.
Click Transform Data to open the Power Query Editor.
In the table preview, find the column whose data type you want to change.
Click the small data type icon in the column header and select the desired data type.
After you're done, click Close & Apply to save your changes back to the report.

📌 Why this matters

Correctly assigning data types in Power BI is essential for accurate calculations, proper sorting, and reliable visualizations. Mismatched data types are one of the most common sources of errors in Power BI reports, causing measures to break and charts to display incorrectly. Using the Power Query Editor to change data types gives analysts full control over how each column is interpreted before data loads into the model. Mastering this step helps teams build cleaner, more trustworthy data models that scale with their reporting needs.

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