# Some variables in metadata are ommitted

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/some-variables-in-metadata-are-ommitted/2501
**Category:** User Support
**Tags:** metadata
**Created:** [January 9, 2018, 11:32pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/some-variables-in-metadata-are-ommitted/2501 "2018-01-09T23:32:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Lyons\_Zhang](https://forum.qiime2.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/ecae2f/32.png) [@Lyons\_Zhang](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Lyons_Zhang)
#### Post date: [January 9, 2018, 11:32pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/some-variables-in-metadata-are-ommitted/2501/1 "2018-01-09T23:32:14Z")

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In my metadata, totally I have 50 variables. Some variables are categorized as 1,2,3. But when I did faith-pd-group-significance.qzv, it said  
"The following metadata categories have been omitted because the metadata was numerical, not categorical: F002, ANClt1000, Creat, Sample.description, ALC, Sample.number, Albumin, Exp.number, ZarsScore, CCI, F106, F014020, Recurrence90, WBC, Age, ANC, SevereCDI, ALClt1000, Group, MRN, Hornsindexseverity".

Actually, the numbers describe the categories. But I am not sure how to change their format in .tsv file to make them category? Or I have to change their name to include strings?

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### Author: ![Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/nicholas_bokulich/32/19937_2.png) [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2018, 12:55am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/some-variables-in-metadata-are-ommitted/2501/2 "2018-01-11T00:55:48Z")

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Hi @Lyons_Zhang,  
See [this post](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/year-excluded-as-numeric-from-kruskal-wallis-test/2016/3). This method only operates on categorical data, but you can trick QIIME into interpreting data as categorical by adding non-numeric characters. For example, 1, 2, 3 could become:  
I, II, III  
one, two, three  
1\_, 2\_, 3\_

In a future release of QIIME2, we plan to provide an easier approach to allow QIIME to interpret numeric columns as categorical. We will post to this thread to announce this change when it occurs. Stay tuned!

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### Author: ![system](https://forum-qiime2-org.s3.dualstack.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/3X/2/1/21af5fe23cb6f4579467c66a9ed94e55274ca7bd.svg) [@system](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 11, 2018, 6:55am UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/some-variables-in-metadata-are-ommitted/2501/3 "2018-02-11T06:55:53Z")

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### Author: ![jairideout](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/jairideout/32/9_2.png) [@jairideout](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/jairideout)
#### Post date: [February 16, 2018, 5:03pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/some-variables-in-metadata-are-ommitted/2501/5 "2018-02-16T17:03:08Z")

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In the QIIME 2 `2018.2` release, Metadata supports optional column typing, allowing users to declare a metadata column "categorical" or "numeric". Using optional column typing, columns that look "numeric" can be declared to be "categorical", allowing the columns to be used in categorical analyses such as `alpha-group-significance`.

There are a number of other changes to QIIME 2 Metadata in the `2018.2` release. See [this forum announcement](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/summary-of-changes-to-metadata-in-qiime-2-2018-2-release/2884) for details on what changed, as well as the updated [Metadata tutorial](https://docs.qiime2.org/2018.2/tutorials/metadata/). 🌞