Hi All,
Do you know if there is any way to input the Excel comments with the sheet as separate columns? I tried to search for some answers, but didn't succeed so far...
Thanks a lot!
Vivien
One other option would be to parse this from the xml within the file. All MS Office documents are basically just zipped xml files.
If you change the extension of your excel file from '.xlsx' to '.zip' you can view the contents, one of which will be a file named "comments.xml"
In my test scenarios that file was located in a folder named "xl"
The comments file is just an xml document that contains the cell reference and comments, as well as the author. This could be easily parsed using alteryx.
Hi @Vivien_Pascu,
I'm not sure how to do this in Alteryx but it can be done in excel - Using VBA you can add all comments to a new sheet in excel and then use this new sheet as a new input for Alteryx? Would this work for you?
Hi Aidan,
Thanks for the answer! I will need to check if I can work around with this, but it is definitely an option... thanks a lot!
I was going to start going down the path of recommending the Python tool, and the library "openpyxl" to accomplish this, but @neilgallen's solution is a really good one.
Something to know also is that you shouldn't need to change the extension to use this with Alteryx. If you configure Alteryx to read the excel file as a "Zip Archive" (*.zip) you can pick out the file (I believe it is xl/comments1.xml) and read it in as XML.
Hi Neil,Would you mind creating and attaching a sample workflow how to get comment/notes from excel .zip file to output file? I tried to follow your advice but I was stuck at the beginning. I'd appreciate it!
