Manually adjusting cells data type .

Question

Hello Community,

I have question about changing data types after file has been exported in Excel. I have workflow that creates excel formulas.

Here is output of workflow in  Excel sheet: Row 4 has excel formula that has been created by workflow.

Since row cells formulas created in Alteryx so whole column has to be converted in string. That make impossible to aggregate.

I need to convert back to column C to I in interger without compromising excel cell formula string  with in Alteryxx.  This is very repetative task so I cannot do it in Excel and it need to be automated. Any suggestion or help will grealty appreciated.

I have attached my workflow below:.

Workflow

Alteryx Output

Thankyou,

AC

Data_test.yxmd

SeanAdams · Answer

Hey @AC

The core problem here is that the output to excel is just exporting data - and so you're always going to be struggling with trying to force excel functionality into an export.

The way round this is to do one of 2 things:

a) named ranges or

b) data connections

Named Ranges

@MarqueeCrew did a post a while ago about using named ranges inside excel - so what you do is you have a tab that you export data to from Alteryx (call this "RawData") - but then you do all your formatting and pivoting and Excel Goodness on another tab that refers back to the raw data tab using excel formulae / references.

Mark - do you want to expand on this approach?

Data Connection:

This is my preferred approach - instead of exporting to Alteryx - export to a database of some kind - even SQL Lite will do.    then set up your excel sheet with a data connection that brings the data in from your DB.    The benefit here is that Excel respects the data type of the underlying DB - and you can do everything once - and then when the data is refreshed you just go into your data connections tab and hit Refresh.    The beauty of this one compared to the named ranges - is that you can send this spreadsheet out to your users and they can hit the refresh button themselves - and you can go out to a long lunch.

Have a great weekend @AC

Sean

geraldo · Answer

@AC

a simple example for possible new dynamic date columns

Data_test_DYNAMIC.yxmd

AC · Answer

Hi @geraldo ,

Thankyou  so much for sharing your idea!

how can I make dates column  dynamic as every month date will be new?