Crosstab Tool removing special chars from strings?

[jcardoso]

Hi all,

the crosstab tool is removing special chars like '&' from a string 'UK & Ireland' results in 'UK___Ireland'  as print below?
Can you fix this?

Thank you,

[DawnDuong]

hi @jcardoso 

A very neat trick is shown in this video to workaround the exact issue you have. Every useful when you want to preserve the formatting.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Videos/Chained-Apps/td-p/43743

Dawn.

[Maskell_Rascal · Accepted solution]

Hi @jcardoso 

When you Crosstab in Alteryx all non-word characters are stripped out and replaced by an underscore. Its essentially doing this: Regex_Replace([Field1],"[^a-zA-Z0-9]",'_'), where Field1 is whatever field you are using for your new headers. 

So to solve for this, we can use that same formula in a separate branch of the data stream prior to the Crosstab tool, and then use a Dynamic Rename to bring back the corrected field names. 

Attached is a sample workflow for you to try out. 

If this solves the problem please mark answer as correct, if not let me know!

Cheers!

Phil