Quotes appearing after saving in CSV

Question

Hello everyone,

I have cells with [NULL] and [BLANKS] that I save in an output in a CSV. When I open this output this cells have quotes  ( "" ) in my output that should NOT be there. These fields are blank but when I look at the output file the quotes are there.

I tried to save this CSV with the QUOTE OUTPUT FIELDS in "Auto" and in "Never" and it doesn't solve the issue.

I am more interested in avoiding it to happen than fixing the problem, but any solution is good for me.

Those columns came from a formula with an IF where the formula end like this:

IF [FIELD] THEN --- ELSE "" ENDIF I suspect that this formulas ended in BLANK if no condition is fulfilled may be the problem.

I have a similar problem that this user has but I cannot solve it https://community.alteryx.com/t5/forums/replypage/board-id/designer-discussions/message-id/20275

As you can see here,  the columns that resulted from formulation appear with the quotes if they where blanck.

THIS IS BEFORE SAVING IN CSV

THIS IS AFTER SAVING IN CSV

clmc9601 · Accepted Answer

Hi @jbqrn,

How strange!

I have not been able to replicate the issue, unfortunately, but I do have some ideas of configurations for experimenting:

- try using null() instead of a blank string ("") in your formula tool

- try changing the code page on your output data tool (configuration 11). I wonder if the type of quotation marks in the csv file are causing problems (was just reminded today that formatted curly quotes are different than standard quotation marks)

- try changing the settings for reading delimiters in quotations (configuration 9)

If all else fails, you can add a multi-field formula at the beginning of your workflow to replace all quotations with blank. This not ideal, but it might be a temporary solution.

Hope this helps!

input data configuration