Unique function issue

[alreisling]

Hi friends, this seems like a dumb issue to have, but I am trying to take info from my email and do things with it. My input is Outlook 365. From there I am trying to sort by unique values, because each time I run the program it duplicates the emails already pulled. It would be great if that didn't happen. However, my work around was to sort by unique values in the body of the email. However, when I drag and drop Unique, and then go to configure, it gives no columns to find unique values from. Not sure why this is happening. I cannot click on the white box and search or enter a column either 

[apathetichell]

Unique tool is a macro which is based off of the metadata of the incoming connection. hit run and it should populate.

[alreisling]

So I did hit run, and then the options came up, but then when I would try to do the next thing it would disappear and I would have to run the data to get the columns to show up again. This seems like more work to have to do this each time.  

[apathetichell]

I don't use the Outlook 365 tool but it sounds like this is happening on refresh/resync by that tool - not the unique tool. my recommendation is to trick it. Here is how. 

1) choose the field you want to use as your unique field.

2) create a text input with that field name.

3) create one line/field in that text input with fieldname 

4) use dynamic rename to take your name from the first row of data. YES  - this means you now have an orphaned column name - that is the goal.

5) add a select tool - you will use this to prevent data truncation - so set it to what you expect your field size should be.

6) before your unique tool - add a union tool - union your Outlook 365 to your select tool.

the column name is now fixed.