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

[msmith]

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.

[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-exter...

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-formu...

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?

[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.

[MarqueeCrew]

@msmith,

My suggestion to refresh the Excel file externally was so that the File A being read already had the results from File B.  Alternatively, move all of the calculations into Alteryx and read both A and B.

Cheers,

Mark

[NadiaS]

Hello

I have just had a similar issue when Alteryx was not refreshing data that is coming from an excel file.

The excel file has several inputs, some of which define the timeframe (from .... to) for the data to be used by Alteryx. The excel file has been used by the same flow over several months, the format has not changed. All that changes are the dates (plus values in other static inputs).

My issue was that Alteryx seemed to have "remembered" inputs from the previous run and the new data was not refreshed during the run of the flow. I made sure the flow was pointing to the right excel file with the latest inputs.

The issue was only resolved when I rebooted my PC - it must have cleared the cache where the old data was stored. However, it is a major issue for me, as I have to -re-run a large model which takes hours and this failure to read latest inputs results in late release of reports to the business. This is quite a big flaw for me and needs to be addressed by the alteryx dev team

[DJW44]

I am continuing to encounter the problem whereby Alteryx does not read the values of Excel cells that refer to a formulae pointing to another Excel cell.

I have 60 or so Excel spreadsheets, each of which has full dedicated entire Tab that is separately updated by an Alteryx workflow A  (this is already a workaround as it does not appear possible to update specific cells within an Excel sheet).

The field information in the spreadsheet Tab is fully updated successfully. This file is effectively 'saved' by Alteryx. When it is opened to be viewed all the data looks correct.

When this sheet is next interrogated by another Alteryx workflow B, it reads the HISTORIC value that was in the calculated cell and not the value as seen by a human.

The only way to solve this is to manually make a change and save the whole worksheet again. Then data is correctly read by its workflow B.

It seems crazy. The data is there and visible to a human, but Alteryx reads a historic value from some earlier incarnation? I am running on a hosted server so cannot just reboot (and have tried this after a full reboot and still have the same issue).

Was any further progress made on this issue?

Dave