Alteryx workflow not recognizing/reading refreshed Excel value in a formula

I have a formula in Excel that I am pulling into an Alteryx workflow (B). The formula in Excel pulls a date from another tab in the Excel file (notification that the data is current). Although the Excel file was refreshed (by another Alteryx workflow(A)) this morning (today is Monday), and the file date shows today's date, Alteryx workflow (B) is pulling in Friday values.

I can 'force' Alteryx to recognize the new data if I open the Excel file, make any change, (add bold, or a color), and re-save the file, not a sustainable solution. How can I make Alteryx recognize the updated Excel data?

thanks.

05_SWD_Compare_Validate.yxmd

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BenMoss

Personally, the flow of Workflow A > Excel A > Excel B > Workflow B, doesn't make much sense. I would try and push your intermediate calculations in your Excel workbooks to Alteryx, thus preventing your data refresh error. Coming in and out of systems is something you should always try and avoid!

Of course Excel A might have a reporting layer, or contain data for other users, that's fine, it can still be kept as an output for workflow A, but you can still perform the intermediary calculations into Alteryx.

If you don't think this is a viable option then I would consider using the 'events' tab in Alteryx which allows you to trigger an external script which would simply open and close the xlsx file.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16932104/how-can-i-use-vbscript-to-effectively-refresh-the-external-data-of-several-excel

Ben

MarqueeCrew

Here's an article that I found regarding updating Excel:

https://superuser.com/questions/232656/how-do-you-update-an-excel-file-data-refresh-and-update-formulas-without-openi

Cheers,

Mark

msmith

Thank you for your response. Workflow A takes a lot of resources and runs a long time, and is run on a scheduler to populate a shared departmental file. I go in 30 minutes or so later and do the final update which only takes a few seconds with Workflow B which is why we have two workflows.

It would appear that the root cause of the issue is Alteryx cannot read the Excel value of a formula* which points to other sheets. Up to this time I do not have any confirmation that there are issues reading 'hard-coded' values in Excel sheets (and I don't think this is true), but have confirmed the issue when trying to return the value of Excel formulas. I have included screenshots of what I experienced yesterday, showing file date times, and my laptop times.

*is this a known issue?

Alteryx_Excel_Refresh_Issue_20181023.docx

msmith

Thank you for your suggestion, I'm sure it will prove useful for another situation I will encounter in the future. The issue at hand does not refer to writing back to the same Excel file, but to reading values from a formula in Excel.

Alteryx_Excel_Refresh_Issue_20181023.docx

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