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Conversion field from Checkbox to Number not works

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Brock
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hi everyone, can you tell me how to convert a checkbox column into numbers? where the cells with the check become 1 and the cells without the check become 0.

I tried to do it but it puts all the empty column back, while on the contrary from numbers to checkbox it seems to work

1 Reply 1

Hey @Brock!
Welcome in!

So, it’s a question of data types.

The checkbox takes a boolean, either as a truthy or falsy.
Airtable will take your 1 or 0 and use type coercion to convert it into a boolean.

The same is not true for converting booleans to numbers.
That’s why you’re not getting any values, as Airtable won’t coerce a boolean into a number value, even though 1 & 0 sometimes represent a boolean.
I think that’s where the confusion comes from.


I’m not too sure exactly how you’re trying to convert your field, but here’s what I would do if I needed to convert a checkbox field to a number field.

Simply group or filter your records based on the checkbox value.

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And then just flat out paste a 1 into the number field for that entire group/view.
Do the same for the falsy group, then just delete your checkbox field.

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