Outputting problematic Excel Files, need recovery each time opening resulting reports

Hello, when outputting reports from alteryx into excel files, every time I open them I get a message from Excel that states, "We found a problem with some content in 'YourFileName.xlsx'. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, clock Yes." This happens with most any excel file I output that is overwriting existing sheets. I also get this message from output reports when using Blob tools and templates, etc. Is there a resolve?

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Accepted answers

cjaneczko

Not quite sure the cause of your error throw. These are the common issues that toss that error that I've noticed

Exporting Alteryx data over formulas in excel
Exporting data that has "=" in the beginning of the field
Formulas in Alteryx that generate tab names longer than 31 characters
Exporting data over fields that are different types. (eg. Excel template column was Number and Text was exported over it.)
Exporting data over a pivot table or excel data table.

npani

I came across similar issue. My excel output did not have any of the following:

Exporting Alteryx data over formulas in excel
Exporting data that has "=" in the beginning of the field
Formulas in Alteryx that generate tab names longer than 31 characters
Exporting data over fields that are different types. (eg. Excel template column was Number and Text was exported over it.)
Exporting data over a pivot table or excel data table.

My output file name had ..\Path\Filename|||'Sheet$' which works perfectly in 2021.1 version but not in 2023.1 version. I had to change it as ..\Path\Filename|||Sheet (removed quotes and $).

All comments

cjaneczko

Are you overwriting any data on those sheets that had formulas or '=' in them? Instead of writing over the entire sheet, can you update to write over a range that doesn't have anything excel would consider a formula?

josh_jenkins

@cjaneczko - in my most recent case, I am using a blob tool that writes to a specified range across multiple sheet, and none of the cells that I am writing over have formulas or '=' in them. There are other sheets within the report that have pivot tables that are set to automatically refresh so I wonder if that could be causing this?

cjaneczko

The sheets that you are writing to, are the sheet names long? Over 31 characters?

josh_jenkins

No most of them are pretty short.

cjaneczko

Not quite sure the cause of your error throw. These are the common issues that toss that error that I've noticed

Exporting Alteryx data over formulas in excel
Exporting data that has "=" in the beginning of the field
Formulas in Alteryx that generate tab names longer than 31 characters
Exporting data over fields that are different types. (eg. Excel template column was Number and Text was exported over it.)
Exporting data over a pivot table or excel data table.

Deano478

@josh_jenkins if you are doing any formulas in those excel sheets and then overwriting them this will cause this error I had it before for that exact reason

josh_jenkins

Thank you both,

I will sift through my output files and make sure that there aren't any formulas that I missed.

LuisaV

Hello, coming in late, but I came upon this question when I got the same error - what worked for me was to remove spaces in the sheet names I was generating and replacing them with _ sign. Maybe that could help either author or someone coming across this thread.

npani

I came across similar issue. My excel output did not have any of the following:

Exporting Alteryx data over formulas in excel
Exporting data that has "=" in the beginning of the field
Formulas in Alteryx that generate tab names longer than 31 characters
Exporting data over fields that are different types. (eg. Excel template column was Number and Text was exported over it.)
Exporting data over a pivot table or excel data table.

My output file name had ..\Path\Filename|||'Sheet$' which works perfectly in 2021.1 version but not in 2023.1 version. I had to change it as ..\Path\Filename|||Sheet (removed quotes and $).

apathetichell

Can you try `Sheet$` instead of 'Sheet$'...

you should be able to test this by bringing in a sheet name with a special character or space in it via input data. now attach an action tool to your input data and see the formatting it's natively providing.

mbogusz

That didn't work for me. It's still giving the error "Repaired Records: Worksheet properties from /xl/workbook.xml part (Workbook)". Maybe this is because I'm trying to write to a folder location that OneDrive is syncing?

apathetichell

throw a sample location of the filename/sheet/range into this thread. Can I confrim that you are writing via output data--- not render -- and that you are using the ` next to the 1 on the keyboard?

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