Reading one directory and see if file exist in another directory

[Taki]

Hi:

I am totally new to Alteryx and I have a situation where I have 2 directories (1 for current quarter and the other for the prior quarter). Within these directories are Excels files and the name of each of these file is a company name like International Business Machines. Not knowing what the file names are, I need to check to see if each of the company (Excel file) in the current quarter existed in the prior quarter directory. If it does, I then need to open up both Excels and compare the tables to see if the values match and produce a compare report for that company. If the company is not found in the prior directory, then bypass it and check if the next file in the Current folder exist in the prior folder and so forth. Is this something Alteryx can do? If it can, will you please provide a sample flow if possible.

Much appreciate it.

Tak

[wwatson · Accepted solution]

You can read the files that are in a directory using the directory tool:

you can then join the data using the filenames to find the files that exist in both folders.

The full path field can be fed to a dynamic input tool to read in the matched files.

It gets a bit complicated but can be done.