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  Public Ticket #3928422
Converting text strings to numeric values
Open

Comments

  • Dan started the conversation
    April 9, 2025 at 1:09pm

    I am trying out the free version of wpDataTables and it looks promising. But I have many tables from surveys with columns that are text strings. I need to be able to create charts that show the total of the different text string values. For example, bar charts that show the number of "Strongly Agree", "Somewhat Agree" and "Neutral". I see that string values can only be used as labels, and that the string values need to be converted to numeric values in order to chart them. Per your chatbot (not very helpful) I have tried converting the column type to both an integer and a float column, but all that did was change all the text strings to zeros. Is there a way to convert different text strings to different values with the plugin? For example, "strongly agree" = 1, "somewhat agree" = 2, etc. Or do I have to do that in the source data before importing? 

  •  1,896
    Miloš replied
    April 10, 2025 at 6:44pm

    Hi Dan,

    First off, I apologize for the initial replies from our chatbot—he’s still learning, and we’re training him to better handle various use cases. 😊

    You're absolutely right—that wasn't helpful for the scenario you're working on.

     

    Here’s a quick workaround you can use when you want to create a chart which will show how many times each string value/choice appears in your data, such as from a survey or other user input:

    Add a Formula column to your source table and set the formula to simply '1'.
    This will act as a "Count" field.

    When creating a chart:

    Select the string column as the first field (for X-axis labels).

    Select the "Count" column as the second field (for the numeric series).

    Enable the "Chart Grouping" feature.
    This will group identical labels and sum their count, displaying them as a single data point.

    If you'd like a more detailed step-by-step example, feel free to check out our full article here:
    👉 [https://help.wpdatatables.com/en/articles/17-counting-string-values-for-charts]

    Let me know if that helps or if you have any other questions!

    Kind regards,
    Milos

    Kind Regards, 

    Miloš Jovanović
    [email protected]

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