Retain special characters in crosstab column names

[kelly_gilbert]

The crosstab tool replaces any non-alphanumeric characters with underscores in column names. It would be helpful to keep the original values as column names (or to have the option to toggle whether or not special characters are replaced with underscores).

This is often an issue for reporting and for dynamically-populated app inputs (e.g. drop-down), where we need to retain the special characters.

For example, say I have the following dataset: 

Currently, the crosstab tool produces this:

I would like this:

There are currently (somewhat cumbersome) workarounds such as adding an extra row with the original names, and then using Dynamic Rename to rename the columns, but it would be great to be able to use the data straight out of the crosstab!

Special characters renamed in crosstab.yxmd

[realdaniel1989]

This is an absolute necessity 😀

[NicoleJ]

Stay tuned!

[nbondarchuk]

Retain Special Characters in New Column Names functionality is available starting from 2024.2, October 30

Go to Cross Tab Tool for more information

[NicoleJ]

Check out the new option in the Cross Tab tool starting with the 24.2 release - you can now choose to keep your special characters in your column names when pivoting your data with the Cross Tab tool!