CODEWITHSUNDEEP
tableau-api
Zach Goodman
Zach Goodman

Reputation: 35

Tableau rounds my numbers to 16 decimals on import. How can I stop this?

When connecting to a data source and importing data into Tableau decimals are limited to 16 places. I have large decimals that are being multiplied by millions of products so these rounding errors are affecting my end calculations.

I made sure the data type is coming in as Number (decimal).

I would like the data to be imported into Tableau un-rounded.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 719

Answers (1)

MonteCarloSims
MonteCarloSims

Reputation: 1771

Tableau, like Excel, uses floating point precision for its numbering system.

This means that Tableau will only provide 15 digits of precision for numbers.

If this were for display purposes, I would suggest bringing the numbers in as strings. See this similar answer. However, because mathematical operations are being performed, the precision is unavoidable.

If possible:

  1. Perform mathematical operations elsewhere. For example, a custom SQL query that will bring the table to Tableau with operations already complete.

  2. Try to operate in a smaller scale - instead of multiplying by millions, multiply by hundreds/thousands and change the name of the field to represent the scale. (ie: 'thousands of millions' instead of billions.) Something like this perhaps.

Upvotes: 2

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