The New Geography Data Type in Excel: Let’s Play With It

/in /by

Data Types were recently release for certain Insiders and in this video I play with the Geography Data Type to show you some strengths and weaknesses.

Some things we see:
– We can’t copy-paste-as-values to get rid of the Data Type and keep the value
– The Geography Data Type tries to fix things for us; e.g., it converted “Zion, IL” into just plain “Zion.”
– We can get city names from a zip code … mostly. Some zip codes returned simply “Postal Code in the United States. But if you have to look up 10 instead of 200, hey! There’s a lot to appreciate.

Finally, I look at what happens if I open a file that has Data Types, but the version of Excel doesn’t have Data Types?

Check it out!

For an intro to Power Query try my Lynda.com course:

Website: https://ozdusoleil.com

My book: Guerrilla Data Analysis 2nd Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Guerrilla-Analysis-Using-Microsoft-Excel/dp/1615470336
My old blog: http://datascopic.net/blog-2-2