I’m working with a Google Sheets QUERY formula that pulls data from another sheet, but I’m having trouble with one particular column not showing text values.
Here’s my current formula:
=QUERY('Data Updates'!A1:U,"SELECT B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,Q,R WHERE U='ACTIVE'")
When I manually filter the source sheet by column U for ‘ACTIVE’ values, everything shows up correctly. But when I use the QUERY function, column K doesn’t display any text values. It’s weird because other text columns like column I work perfectly fine.
For example, if I put “test123” in cell I50, it appears correctly in the query results. But the same text “test123” in cell K50 doesn’t show up at all in the results. Only numbers seem to work in that column.
I’ve already tried:
- Checking if the column formatting is correct
- Removing column K from the query and adding it back
- Changing the order of columns in the SELECT statement
- Copying the same text to other columns (works fine there)
- Retyping the values directly in column K (still doesn’t work)
Has anyone encountered this issue before? What could be causing one specific column to ignore text values in a QUERY function?
Had this exact problem six months ago - drove me nuts for hours. Here’s what worked: clear all of column K, then repopulate it with fresh data. QUERY samples the first few rows to figure out data type, so if those rows have numbers or are empty, it locks the column as numeric. Even if you add text later, it won’t display because QUERY already made up its mind. Delete everything in column K and start entering text values from the top down. Make sure your header and first few data rows contain text, not numbers. Once you repopulate with text first, QUERY should pick up the text values correctly. It’s a frustrating Google Sheets quirk, but this fix works every time for me.
sounds like there’s some nums in column K messing with QUERY. sometimes it confuses what type it should be. try adding a header row if you haven’t, or use format in your query, like =QUERY('Data Updates'!A1:U,"SELECT B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,Q,R WHERE U='ACTIVE' format K ''") to force text.
I’ve hit this before - it’s usually how Google Sheets reads the data type in that column. QUERY gets weird with mixed data types in one column. Try wrapping column K with TEXT in your query: =QUERY('Data Updates'!A1:U,"SELECT B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,TEXT(K),L,M,N,Q,R WHERE U='ACTIVE'"). This makes Sheets treat everything in column K as text instead of guessing the data type. You might also have invisible characters or formatting mess in that column. Select all of column K, copy it to Notepad, then paste it back. This clears any hidden formatting that’s breaking QUERY’s ability to read the text values.