Why are cell formats changing when outputting to Excel in a formatted template?

I am outputting columns of data that each contain segments of 9 populated cells and and 2 blank cells in order to ouput the entire column at once. When outputting columns of data to the formatted Excel template, the last of the 2 cells that are empty or NULL within each group is copying the format from the previous cell. (I am only outputting the columns with # for the time being).

Copying format from previous cell.jpg

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VinodKammula28

If you're using a template, go ahead and format the entire output range before Alteryx writes to it. That way, Excel doesn’t try to get clever with formatting when new data comes in.

All comments

Dhrish

@Sunceray can you share the desired output. As from the pic it looks like its correct.

KGT

Alteryx will only output a column as one type, as that's how data tables work in the non-excel world. In this case, you are replacing the Null() cells, and so they will be changing to the format of the column.

I don't think you would be able to output 2 different formats in the same column. If this is possible with outputting to named ranges, then I apologise, but on the surface, I can't see how it would work. It would need to be outputting all the tables to their ranges, rather than outputting all rows at once to a range.

VinodKammula28

Put something in those "blank" cells
It sounds silly, but just putting an empty string ("") or even a single space (" ") in those cells makes Excel stop applying formatting from above.

VinodKammula28

IF ISNULL([MyField]) THEN " " ELSE [MyField] ENDIF

VinodKammula28

If you're using a template, go ahead and format the entire output range before Alteryx writes to it. That way, Excel doesn’t try to get clever with formatting when new data comes in.

VinodKammula28

If you're running this regularly and formatting still gets weird, you could throw in a small Excel macro to clean things up after the data’s written. Most people don’t need this, but it's there if you're picky about formatting.

VinodKammula28

Solved: Keep Formatting in Excel Output - Alteryx Community

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