Recreating VLookups in Alteryx

[Deano478]

Hi Community,

I know this question has probably been asked before on older version of designer but I was wondering is it possible on Alteryx to do a recreate Vlookups from excel so for example if I find all staff that have matching IDs I then need to use that data again to match on another field how could I do this.?

I cant share my workflow or data for this problem as I'm working with sensitive info I hope that is okay.

Any advice, examples or guidance would be hugely appreciated Thank you all in advance. 

[Sebastiaandb · Accepted solution]

Hé @Deano478 ,

Basically the Alteryx counterpart of the Vlookup is using the join tool :-). 

Right click on the tool in the toolpallete to get to the example. You basically select the two key fields that match and in that way you can add data to a dataset from another dataset.

If you want to keep all the records from one datafile regardless of all matching, use the union behind it!

Greetings,

Seb

[Deano478]

Hey @Sebastiaandb I had a look at the example there and wow its so much more efficient rather than typing out a big formula in excel 😄

[apathetichell]

One quick clarification. vlookup returns exactly one (the first) value. Join returns all matched values. If there are 10 matches in your join syntax you will get 10 records. If you need exactly one match - and you are not sure if you have duplicative matches (or you know you do)- try Find/Replace instead of Join.