PowerQuery: Replace Value (Dashes)

[ovetteabejuela]

Hi Again,

I'm trying to replace a value - a DASH particularly. It works, however it also does remove the dash symbol for negative numbers. How do I prevent M from doing that?

[MrPowerQuery]

Transform the number to text and replace the dash "-" with "-0". After this convert the column to a number. The "-0" will be converted to 0 and all other numbers will remain the same, since adding a "0" in front of a number will not affect the value of it.

[Phil_Seamark · Accepted solution]

Hi @ovetteabejuela,

Is the negative number part of a longer peice of text? 

Could you create a custom column to preserve the negative number before cleaning your original column?

[ovetteabejuela]

Hi @Phil_Seamark, thanks I actually did resort to that solution store (1,-1) in a separate column prior to removing dashes. I hope there was an option to tick to exclude dashes that precedes a number though - an out-of-the-box solution.

Thanks.