Leading Zero's Dropped in Poewr BI

[Anonymous]

Hi, 

I imported an excel sheet to my PowerBI and the zip code is dropping the leading zero. Now on my map, it's showing pings in Europe but it should be the USA but the leading zero is dropped. I double checked that my excel has the leading zero's, the column is formatted as a postal code and text. Please help.

 

[jshutters]

This is a situation where Power BI is not as smart as you wish it could be.  This situation is also partially addressed during the Power BI Dashboard in a Day event, if you've ever attended one.  Essentially, this could be fixed in the Query Editor when you import the data from Excel.  Be sure to import the zip code as TEXT, and then any leading zero will not be lost.

[Anonymous]

How do I do that without re creating my reports? thanks! 

[jshutters · Accepted solution]

In general, zip codes should be alfa-numeric, and not whole numbers.  So you need to change the data type.  In Power BI Desktop, open the Query Editor, highlight the Zip column, from the ribbon select Home --> Data Type, and update it to Text.  Then click Close & Apply.