Output tool option

[Leo777]

Hello,

New user here, I've got a question about the output tool. Currently I'm appending data from my workflow to an access file with the aggregate data set. I'm wondering if there's a way to delete the duplicate data that's coming from my workflow, that is already in the aggregate data? Sorry if this is difficult to understand.

[robdelisle]

I would bring in the file that I am writing to, the existing file, and join it with the 'new' data file. Then only append the data that is coming out of the right output as any duplicate data will be in the inner join.

Assuming you are a beginner user as stated and you are not using dynamic naming conventions here.

-Robert

[Leo777]

Hi Robert,

Is there a way without using the join tool? I'm planning to run this workflow many times throughout the day during the month, as the data I'm working with updates very frequently. Every time I run this workflow I will get duplicate data plus the updated data, wondering if there's a way I could delete this months data before updating. I'm trying to append my output into data that already contains most of my workflow data.

Thanks,

Leo 

[robdelisle · Accepted solution]

Hi Leo,

Do you need to append the data or can you just overwrite the file each time? If you can just overwrite the data and not lose anything I would use the Unique tool to detect and remove duplicates.

I don't believe that there is anyway to know that some of the new data is duplicated data unless you compare the files together as shown above. 

-Robert