There has been a long standing head-scratcher, that when you assign “” (the empty string) or " " (Space) to a numeric column, they would assign Zero instead.
I have just worked with AppSheet on trying to implement a small change that would allow “” (empty string) to be assigned as “” to numeric columns. They actually attempted to make this change a little while ago but had to roll it back as it caused backwards compatibility issues. So this change will not be made at this time.
However, there is still a way to return a numeric column to empty string.
You can use NUMERIC("") and DECIMAL("") functions. These functions were pointed out in a post discussing this issue. I thought I would just forward the info on to everyone in the form of a Tip.
By the way, assigning Space, " ", will also assign Zero to numeric column and will do the same when using it in the NUMERIC() and DECIMAL() functions. I, guess afterall, Space is a text value so it doesn’t really make sense to assign it to a numeric column at all (credit to @Marc_Dillon for pointing this out in discussions).
I hope this helps someone!
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