Getting Date in Excel output which can be filtered based on year and month (Like normal)

Question

Hi,

I was creating a report from alteryx workflow which consists many date fields. In Alteryx and in excel, the date is getting displayed as yyyy-MM-dd format. The end user is not too fuss about the format, but he wants to filter the date fields based on year and month as shown in below example.

And my data which is in date datatype in alteryx is getting copied as Number in Excel. I am using render tool to generate the excel output.

Q1) Why is the data not getting generated as Date in Excel?

Q2) Is there a way to rectify this and generate date in excel which can be filtered as above picture?

Thanks,

Tony

tonysavio · Answer

Hey Guys,

I have identified that this is a known issue. There is a ticket raised regarding this. Although one person is suggesting that this is fixed in the latest 2021, I don't know where this is at.

So basically, everything that comes through render tool is formatted as Number. There is no workaround for this in earlier versions of Alteryx.

Thanks.

Check that discussion here.

tonysavio · Answer

Hi Qiu,

I could use normal output tool, but I have an action tool which generates a list box and this requires me to have a render tool I believe.

Qiu · Answer

@tonysavio

I think I have identified the issue is with the Render tool. Maybe it just outputs the data as string as default. 🙄