Converting Numbers In Alphanumeric Columns

24_r_

I'm new to Alteryx and have spent the past few hours reading through probably 75-100 community posts and trial and erroring. Apologies if this is a basic issue, but I have columns in an xlsx file where some cells have numbers, and some have letters/words. From reading about data types, these need to be set as some form of string, however, when I do this and export to Excel, the numbers are stored as text (which I understand that's what they are on the source data) - see example picture.

My question is: using Alteryx, how do I get the numbers to be stored as numbers and the text to be stored as text? In the same column.

In addition to any solutions, if you wouldn't mind a short explanation of whatever you provide, or any resources you can route me to, it would be much appreciated so I can learn.

Input data is attached for reference.

Thank you!

Input Data.xlsx

CoG

Someone may be able to provide more insight as to whether or not some fancy output magic can accomplish your use-case.

That being said, one of the things that enables Alteryx Designer to work its magic (unlike Excel) is that columns have the same data type. This cannot be changed as it is a integral to the application's functionality.