Data Shuttle Import Different from Source Data - Decimal Places Issue

Protonsponge

Hello,

I have a data shuttle workflow that I believed worked really well. However, today, while thoroughly examining some data, I discovered that the source data isn't an exact match with the imported data.

After investing a significant amount of time trying to determine the reason for this discrepancy, I believe the issue lies in the fact that the values in my source data are presented as whole numbers. However, upon closer inspection in Excel, I found that there are decimal places in the data. It appears that Data Shuttle defaults to rounding down, and when this is spread over thousands of cells, the differences add up to a significant discrepancy.

Source Data (Excel):-

Smartsheet data after DataShuttle

Before I go playing with my DataShuttle workflows, I wanted to get the thoughts of the community on how best to resolve this…

Would formatting my excel source data to 3 decimal places and re-importing resolve this or is there a different solution?

Very grateful for any thoughts/suggestions,

Protonsponge

Paul Newcome

Have you tried adjusting the visible decimals in your Smartsheet to see if the data is at least stored on the back end just not displayed?

Protonsponge

Thank you @Paul Newcome for picking up the Q. The data has come in as a whole number in to Smartsheet as per screen shot below.

I might have a play with a dummy workflow to see if I can bring in the data more accurately if I save the excel file to 3dp.

If there any settings in Datashuttle to refine the rounding rules? I can't find anything obvious that can be adjusted.

Thank you

Protonsponge

Paul Newcome

There's nothing that can be adjusted in Data Shuttle. It looks like it is simply bringing in "face value" from your source file, so getting the decimals displayed in the source file should help.

Protonsponge

Hello @Paul Newcome - Thank you again for coming back to me.

I was playing around with this on Friday afternoon in some demo sheets and learnt that if I save the excel file with the extra decimal places, DataShuttle will bring in the data more actually and so this should resolve my issue going forward.

Every days a school day 🤓

Protonsponge