varchar & decimal in same field

[nutrotek]

Hello,

I have data results in a SQL database. The results can either be <1 or a numeric decimal value such as 1.2 or 20.75. The <1 are stores in the field TextValue and the actual results are stored in the field LabValue. I download these results to Excel for calculations. My clients want the results stored in one Excel column "Results" where the results are <1, 1.2, 20.75 and they can perform calculations. If I concatinate these two fields SELECT TextValue+CAST(LabValue as VARCHAR(10)) from tblSampleTable, the resulting field is text and cannot be calculated in Excel. Is there a way I can combine the two, keeping the text field as varchar and the decimal field as decimal?

 

[AlexCuse]

no there isn't.

why not replace <1 with -1 or something that will export to excel as a number though? Some numeric value that you are very certain will not appear in your data. You can then change these using conditional formatting or something.

Hope this helps,

Alex

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