Working with (wanted) line breaks and the Table > Email tools

[Scott_Snowman]

I have a workflow that pulls from SharePoint, slices into various pieces based on project owner and status, and mails out separate tables based on the project owner's email address. No problem there.

The issue is the formatting of the table. As noted in LisaL's comment here the Email tool does not play well with new lines in data.

Here's how the data flows in from Sharepoint. The "Running Update Detail" field has new lines inserted.

Project ID	Project Start Date	Last Updated Date	Status	Running Update Detail
54A	10-30-17	10-31-17	Pending parts	10/30: Dispatch requested review of functionality. Approved by Scheduling. 10/31: Dispatched agent reported that part code #34B1-LL/A was not functioning and needed to be re-ordered
23B	10-24-17	10-27-17	Pending Scheduling approval	10/24: Dispatch requested review of functionality. 10/24: Due to remote location, Scheduling requested extension of project timeline 10/27: Approval from finance to extend project parameters

I can see that Alteryx recognizes the new lines because it does flag them in the Results panes.

However when the data is emailed out through Alteryx, the following occurs.

Running Update Detail

10/30: Dispatch requested review of functionality. Approved by Scheduling. 10/31: Dispatched agent reported that part code #34B1-LL/A was not functioning and needed to be re-ordered

10/24: Dispatch requested review of functionality. 10/24: Due to remote location, Scheduling requested extension of project timeline 10/27: Approval from finance to extend project parameters

Since there could be multiple lines of data flowing in per cell, I don't want to split apart into unique fields as in the linked solution because I don't know how many fields I'll need. (And I'm not aware of a "futureproof" method to do it easily if there is one.)

Is there a way to either:

• Maintain the new line formatting in the email output,
• Selectively bold the dates that separate updates so they're easier to spot, or
• Another way to split out the data so it's visually easy to separate?

[vcorrei5]

In my case, I would like to report in excel but I did not have the same result. Could you help me also?

I am attached the data table, flow and prints (data table format & result).

[Scott_Snowman]

Hi @vcorrei5 I'm afraid I don't have much to recommend here. I removed all the Cleanse and Formula tools from your workflow and inspected the output from the Table tool.

It looks like the data is entering the Table tool with a newline, but not encoded -- instead it's actually being inserted into the HTML with a newline, which looks like it's being ignored by the HTML parser. The result is that the new line is stripped out.

My original post was written many years ago in a previous version of Designer so it's possible the implementation of the Table tool has changed since then. I'm afraid I don't have any good recommendations other than to check with the Alteryx support team to see if they have any solutions or workarounds. 

 

[Scott_Snowman]

Hi @vcorrei5 -- I misunderstood your question and took another look.

Make sure to follow the instructions given at https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Desktop-Discussions/Working-with-wanted-line-break...

It doesn't appear you've replaced the Excel line breaks with new line encoded characters (<br/>) in your workflow, so the Table is treating them as (unwanted) whitespace and they're being removed. Adding in that Regex_Replace should solve the problem.

[vcorrei5]

I already got it! Thanks!!