Render to a Specific Sheet in Excel

[angeline559]

Hello, 

I've been searching the community for a solution, tried a few suggestions, but didn't seem to get the result I was after.   I have a formatted Excel workbook that is my destination output location for a repeatable report.  I am overwriting into the pre-determined sheets/cells as designed successfully.  I now want to incorporate a Layout Render of a chart and table into a new sheet. without affecting what is already working in my workbook.   If possible I'd like to pre-name my destination sheet.

Example

New Tab Name : Summary (where the new layout render should land)

Tab 2 Name:  Inventory

Tab 3 Name: Backlog

Tab 4 name:Unmatched

Any help is appreciated.

[DavidP · Accepted solution]

Hi @angeline559 

If I understand correctly, you want to use the Render tool in the Reporting Palette to write to an existing Excel file?

The problem with the Render tool is that it will always completely overwrite the whole of an existing file - there is no option to just write to a specific sheet.

I don't know that there is an easy way in Alteryx to achieve this. The only option I can think of is to create an Excel file with your chart using a Render tool and then use some VBA code in a Run Batch Command Tool to copy the sheet to your destination Excel file, but it's not quite straightforward.

[angeline559]

@davidp

.Appreciate your quick response. 

Yes, that is exactly what was happening.   The VBA code solution is probably more advanced than my current skill level, but something to keep in my back pocket for later.  With that, I went a more traditional Excel route and I ended up creating a couple of pivot charts in a new tab that can be refreshed from the data output from Alteryx on the other tabs pretty easily.

Thank you!

[CarterJ]

"The problem with the Render tool is that it will always completely overwrite the whole of an existing file - there is no option to just write to a specific sheet."

Is this still the case? That you cannot use the Render tool to write to a specific sheet within a given Excel workbook? Or has there been any alternative solution for this that anyone is aware of?

Challenge: Output a Basic Table from a workflow to an existing Excel workbook specific sheet.

[NehaIHG]

Hi Carter, 

Yes Render tool still has the limitation and I also have been facing this issue that whenever a render tool is used to output data in a pre- existing sheet, it removes all the other data and we get only the output report from the Render tool.