Working with (wanted) line breaks and the Table > Email tools

I have a workflow that pulls from SharePoint, slices into various pieces based on project owner and status, and mails out separate tables based on the project owner's email address. No problem there.

The issue is the formatting of the table. As noted in LisaL's comment here the Email tool does not play well with new lines in data.

Here's how the data flows in from Sharepoint. The "Running Update Detail" field has new lines inserted.

Project ID

Project Start Date

Last Updated Date

Status

Running Update Detail

54A

10-30-17

10-31-17

Pending parts

10/30: Dispatch requested review of functionality. Approved by Scheduling.

10/31: Dispatched agent reported that part code #34B1-LL/A was not functioning and needed to be re-ordered

23B

10-24-17

10-27-17

Pending Scheduling approval

10/24: Dispatch requested review of functionality.

10/24: Due to remote location, Scheduling requested extension of project timeline

10/27: Approval from finance to extend project parameters

I can see that Alteryx recognizes the new lines because it does flag them in the Results panes.

However when the data is emailed out through Alteryx, the following occurs.

Running Update Detail

10/30: Dispatch requested review of functionality. Approved by Scheduling. 10/31: Dispatched agent reported that part code #34B1-LL/A was not functioning and needed to be re-ordered

10/24: Dispatch requested review of functionality. 10/24: Due to remote location, Scheduling requested extension of project timeline 10/27: Approval from finance to extend project parameters

Since there could be multiple lines of data flowing in per cell, I don't want to split apart into unique fields as in the linked solution because I don't know how many fields I'll need. (And I'm not aware of a "futureproof" method to do it easily if there is one.)

Is there a way to either:

Maintain the new line formatting in the email output,
Selectively bold the dates that separate updates so they're easier to spot, or
Another way to split out the data so it's visually easy to separate?

Common Use Cases

Accepted answers

patrick_digan

@Scott_Snowman You can use a line break tag

<br />

I ended up doing it in 2 steps- First I used a formula tool to convert the new lines to line breaks

REGEX_Replace([Running Update Detail],"\n","<br />")

Then I ran that through the table tool. The table tool will escape the < and > symbols, so then I used another formula tool after to convert it back

Replace([Table],"&lt;br /&gt;","<br />")

That seemed to do the trick for me

Hope that helps!

Email Tool newlines.yxmd

All comments

patrick_digan

@Scott_Snowman You can use a line break tag

<br />

I ended up doing it in 2 steps- First I used a formula tool to convert the new lines to line breaks

REGEX_Replace([Running Update Detail],"\n","<br />")

Then I ran that through the table tool. The table tool will escape the < and > symbols, so then I used another formula tool after to convert it back

Replace([Table],"&lt;br /&gt;","<br />")

That seemed to do the trick for me

Hope that helps!

Email Tool newlines.yxmd

Scott_Snowman

Patrick, this works perfectly. As a bonus, now I see what should have been obvious: tables are passed from tool to tool as HTML strings. So I was able to both create new lines and use RegEx_Replace to insert bold and underline tags, further enhancing visibility on the date:

REGEX_Replace([Running Escalation Detail], "([\d]+\/[\d]+)\:", "<b><u>$1</u></b>:")

These additional tags needed to be replaced in the [Table] field (as with the original tag) but things look great now (literally).

A great opportunity for a macro solution down the line, if I am working with other datasets with this format.

Thanks a ton!

bccpwc

This is actually what I'm looking to do but it doesn't work for me. I even downloaded the sample solution you posted and that doesn't work either. thoughts?

Prasanna921

Hello Patrick,

This post is very helpful to get better understanding to solve new line characters issues using email output option. But in my requirement, I need to dump the data into powerpoint slides using render tool. I can't see any data field once after using the second formula tool for replacing ( "," ").

Can you please Help me with this ?

Scott_Snowman

@sanyajaleel my code is specific to the RegEx pattern of looking for a date followed by a colon.

If you are looking to bold and underline the phrase 2-3 days then you need a different RegEx pattern. If it's always a number, a dash, and another number followed by a space and then the word "days" then this should work:

Regex_Replace([text], "(\d+\-\d+\sdays)", "<b><u>$1</b></u>")

nslowey

I'm attempting to use this solution and having difficulty doing so. I have a workflow that documents all formulas used in a target workflow, and I want to preserve any newlines entered in the formulas (which are usually for readability). However, when I run the data into a table tool, it's forced onto a single line. When I tried to apply the Regex_Replace solution presented here, it simply folded in the tag as if it were perfectly normal text, both in Browse and in the finished Render, as seen in the third row here:

Has an update broken this functionality? All I want is to have these newlines be present in the Excel sheet that I'm generating.

Scott_Snowman

Hi @vcorrei5 I'm afraid I don't have much to recommend here. I removed all the Cleanse and Formula tools from your workflow and inspected the output from the Table tool.

It looks like the data is entering the Table tool with a newline, but not encoded -- instead it's actually being inserted into the HTML with a newline, which looks like it's being ignored by the HTML parser. The result is that the new line is stripped out.

My original post was written many years ago in a previous version of Designer so it's possible the implementation of the Table tool has changed since then. I'm afraid I don't have any good recommendations other than to check with the Alteryx support team to see if they have any solutions or workarounds.

Scott_Snowman

Hi @vcorrei5 -- I misunderstood your question and took another look.

Make sure to follow the instructions given at https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Discussions/Working-with-wanted-line-breaks-and-the-Table-gt-Email-tools/m-p/90122/highlight/true#M31337

It doesn't appear you've replaced the Excel line breaks with new line encoded characters ( ) in your workflow, so the Table is treating them as (unwanted) whitespace and they're being removed. Adding in that Regex_Replace should solve the problem.

vcorrei5

I already got it! Thanks!!

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