Table reporting tool replacing negative sign with parentheses

[abrasch]

The Table reporting tool is automatically replacing negative signs with parentheses to represent negative numbers. I believe this became an issue after upgrading to v.2021.4 -- I am putting in a case with Alteryx support, but wanted to post here as well; perhaps missing a new setting in the Table tool?

Data in Select tool before  Table tool

Data in Table

[OllieClarke]

Thanks for raising this @abrasch I can't see any setting which would let us change this, nor anything in the xml of the tool which makes reference to style of negative numbers. I couldn't see anything in the user settings either 🤔

[danilang]

As a follow up to this, the accounting format is maintained when rendered to html and pdf, but not when rendered to excel.  Excel output has the minus sign

Dan

[abrasch]

Thanks for digging into this deeper @OllieClarke  and @danilang! I did lodge a support case last Friday, so hopefully this issue is resolved expeditiously--it's not ideal to have to explain to clients why reporting outputs suddenly changed and there's no way for us to globally address.

[Aparker8709]

I second everything @abrasch said. 

[EdP]

Thank you for bringing up this issue!  It's been reported to our development team for 2021.4,1, defect ID GCSE-366 (although this ID will change as it's taken up by a developer). 

A temporary workaround is to add a Select Tool before the Table Tool to change the numeric data to a String.  This conversion will use a negative sign, as desired.  You can use a Formula Tool if you have specific format requirements.  You'll also want to confirm any row or column formatting in the Table Tool operates as expected with the data type change.

[abrasch]

Hi @EdP,
Was this issue not addressed in the new version of 2021.4 that was released today?

[danilang]

Hi @abrasch 

According to the release notes here, this issue hasn't been fixed yet.

Dan

[EdP]

Hi  @abrasch -

The defect was relabeled TDSL-4164 and shows that the correction will be available in the 2022.1 release. For 2021.4 you can try the workaround to use a Select Tool to convert the numeric data to a String prior to the Table Tool. Note: this may impact row and column formatting rules in the Table Tool’s configuration.

[abrasch]

Thanks for the update @danilang and @EdP. The workaround is not viable due to the impacts you stated and the extra effort this requires in many apps/workflows. Patiently waiting for 2021.1 release.