Excel: Take file/tablename from field

[MarqueeCrew]

I was asked by a client @brianvigus to help him put the current date onto a daily Excel output file.  When they tried to prepend/append the date, it only would do so to the worksheet name and not to the workbook name.  I do like the ability to update the table (worksheet) name and understand their desire to update the workbook name too.

My solution was to create a COMPLETE PATH\FILENAME|SHEETNAME data element and use the existing option to change the entire file path.  That works.

I don't know if the solution to this idea is to update the help instructions to explain that table renames act differently than file renames or if the solution requires more functional options on append/prepend.

Thanks,

Mark

[lgregor]

There is a workaround that uses the Reporting tools but it is difficult to use and doesn't work well when you have a lot of columns. To make the current solution with lots of columns you have to play around with page size settings to get your report to "fit" in Excel. This wastes a lot of time having to run and rerun until you get the settings just right. It would be great if you could just use the data output tool, choose a filename and then select an option to append the date to that filename.

[Bob_Blackey]

I'd like to append a field to an Excel file name in the Output tool but for Excel it appends the field to the Table name instead.

The solution is build the filename ahead of time as mentioned in @HenrietteH 's KB article but that seems less than elegant.

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/How-to-Guide-to-dynamically-renaming-output-...

Solution:

Expand the list of options to:

Append Suffix to FIle Name

Prepend Prefix to File Name

Append Suffix to Table Name

Prepend Prefix to Table Name

Cheers,

Bob

[brianscott]

Ideally, for excel output, we'd have the ability to define a filename, and a sheet name dynamically.  I've fought this problem before and just gave up.  Thanks for posting it. 

[patrick_digan]

This would be a nice addition