Most efficient way to save/retrieve Alteryx output file?

healsio2025

There's an "output tool" and "summarize tool" added at the end of workflow, however the output csv file will be too large for Excel to handle, how could I retrieve the result of the previously processed workflow by using the output or summarize tool either in Alteryx or Excel?

Workflow

Accepted answers

alexnajm

How about saving it as a .yxdb?

Yoshiro_Fujimori

Hi @healsio2025 ,

If you re-use the output data only with Alteryx, then .yxdb is the best option.

Alteryx help: Alteryx Database File Format says;

"The YXDB format is the most efficient file type for reading and writing in Alteryx

because it has no size limit, is compressed for maximum speed,

and includes additional metadata that references the source of the data and how the data was created. "

If you may use it with Excel as well, then you need to output in .xlsx format.

The file in .xlsx format is smaller than .csv as it is zipped, but not optimized for Alteryx.

All comments

alexnajm

How about saving it as a .yxdb?

Yoshiro_Fujimori

Hi @healsio2025 ,

If you re-use the output data only with Alteryx, then .yxdb is the best option.

Alteryx help: Alteryx Database File Format says;

"The YXDB format is the most efficient file type for reading and writing in Alteryx

because it has no size limit, is compressed for maximum speed,

and includes additional metadata that references the source of the data and how the data was created. "

If you may use it with Excel as well, then you need to output in .xlsx format.

The file in .xlsx format is smaller than .csv as it is zipped, but not optimized for Alteryx.

Qiu

Second on yxdb format.

apathetichell

This is really specific to your tech stack. Is it Alteryx entirely? Do you have a standard database? What are you doing with this ever growing output results? If you do not have a company-wide DB .... other than improperly used Excel -> now is the time to create one. Snowflake? It's fine for small footprints like this - and offers a good UI/integrations and fits well with Alteryx. AWS RDS on a free tier? S3? Why not? Anyway -> my point is you should be writing the .csv to something which is not Excel if you are writing over say 200K lines. Excel is not a database. Google Sheets is not a database. Alteryx is not a database.

Raj

In the Output Data Tool, select YXDB as the file type. YXDB files can handle large datasets efficiently and be read back into Alteryx later.

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