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Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

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Find and Replace function not working for embedded lines

DEluwah
6 - Meteoroid

We recently made a change to a dataset by changing field names only. The inherent figures of the data is still the same just the column headers.

I know I can perform a find and replace for all instances where the column headers were referenced in the workflow but the challenge is that the original column headers had new lines embedded in them. when I try to use the find and replace, only the first line is highlighted indicating that that is the only bit that can be replaced. Is there a way to get this done at all?

3 REPLIES 3
apathetichell
19 - Altair

This sounds like you want to use some kind of regex replace. Are you doing this inside of an Alteryx .yxmd/.yxmc.yxwz file opened as a text source in another Alteryx workflow? honestly - this sounds like you've made significant wrong moves here. I'd go back to the original file with the wrong names and create a master mapper of column names. you can then includes the original column names with the new line breaks before you changed them -> mapped to the fieldnames you want. You may want to include tags ie > < around your fieldnames. This will prevent incorrect matches.

 

This could be totally off from what you are trying to do - but based upon your description - this is my take.for some of this -. mapping fieldname changes and using dynamic rename early in your worklow is the easiest way to standardize column names. I do not think you did that.

Qiu
21 - Polaris
21 - Polaris

@DEluwah 
it will be better if you could share some sample data and your sample flow.

Just blind shoot, have you used the option highlighted below?
2025-04-28 083408.png

DEluwah
6 - Meteoroid

@apathetichell 
Thank you. Your suggestion gave me an idea!
I eventually used a method similar to what you mentioned but by creating a mapping file of the column names then used the Dynamic rename tool to bring in the new columns names

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