Output Join Tool's Left and Inner Join anchors to different tabs in Excel file

Pretty new to Alteryx and I am struggling to do a fairly simple task.

I want to save the output from both 'L' and 'J' anchor of the Join tool to different tabs in the same Excel file, but this would give me error of 'The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.' I read up a bit about the Block Until Done tool but I don't think that can solve my need of directly using the output from the Join Tool.

So I guess I need to look for a way to write the Join Tool multiple anchors' output to different tabs in a sequential way. Advice would be much appreciated!

output Join Tool anchor to multiple tabs

Output

Join

Accepted answers

atcodedog05

Hi @fishcake

you need to use Block until done tool. Here is a recourse which will help you out in the task.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/How-to-write-to-multiple-tabs-separately-without-errors/ta-p/33413

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-Block-Until-Done/ta-p/33417

Workflow would be like below:

Hope this helps 🙂

If this post helps you please mark it as solution. And give a like if you dont mind 😀👍

write tabs.yxmd

MarqueeCrew

@fishcake ,

here's a trick:

take the J Output anchor to excel and also to ac summarize tool. Count any field. Take the L anchor to an APPEND FIELDS tool and buying that count to the source (bottom). Now Deselect the count field. Take the Output to the same excel.

the reason why this works is that no second write to excel can happen until you've read the j data.

cheers,

mark

RolandSchubert

Hi @fishcake ,

if the Block Until Done tool does not work for any reason, you could use a Formula tool on both "L" and "J" anchor, assign the "sheet name" to the data, use a Union tool to combine both outputs and use "Take File/Table Name From Field" to direct the rows to the right sheet: