How to select specific columns

Learner09

Hello All,

In my Alteryx workflow, I have an excel spreadsheet (Input Data) that contains approx. 26k lines/ rows with 350 columns but I need some specific columns for my analysis - around 100 columns out of 350 in a specific order. Is there any way I can pull only100 columns that I need in a specific order, or do I need to arrange and select manually? Please guide.

Thanks,

AngelosPachis

Hi @Learner09 ,

Is there any pattern in the column headers? So for example, if all your columns are named F1,F2,F3,...., F349, F350, then there is a pattern and you can use a dynamic select tool to keep only the columns you need (that's my first suggestion)

Another way to go would be to transpose everything so you will get the column headers in a single column and the values in a second column, and then you can filter as necessary on the field names. The you would have to cross-tab back, and to get the correct order you can assign a number prefix in the header of each column, so 1_ would be for your first column, 2_ for the second and so on.

Then you can remove those prefixes with a dynamic rename tool.

Hope that helps.

Angelos