Problems outputting to XLSX after Office upgrade to 64 bit

Question

My coworker and I are Alteryx Designer  2020 users and about 1 week ago our IT dept decided to upgrade everyone on office from 32 bit to 64 bit and we are attributing this as a possible cause of write errors we both have received. We output by overwriting XLSX files as there are pivot tables that refresh based on the updated data. I have had less problems that my coworker—I’m on a slightly more recent version. There are some workflows he cannot seem to run that I can. He thinks YXDB is unaffected.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

DanielG · Answer

Hmmm... Writing to Excel can be adventure any time there is existing formatting, etc. and you aren't just data-dumping.  If nothing else in the workflow changed, I can't think of a reason why it would stop working.  I'd suggest reaching out to Alteryx via a support ticket as it might be a very specific setting that is too hard to pinpoint out here in the "wild".

MarkMcCullagh · Answer

Hi, my coworker resaves all workflows in the lower version. They were tried and tested over time. We plan to upgrade to a 2023 version soon.

DanielG · Answer

@MarkMcCullagh  If you created a workflow in a newer version than your coworker, they will not be able to run your workflows.  You all need to be on the same version, and I highly recommend pulling down a supported version of Alteryx Designer.  Not sure 2020 is still being maintained.  What you can do to solve this (assuming your not using tools that arent available in the older version) is open the workflow in Notepad and change the second line <AlteryxDocument yxmdVer="2022.1"> to reflect the older version your coworker is on.  Not sure if that will solve all your Excel issues, but it will be a good start on getting you and your coworker(s) on a level playing field.