Combining similar street addresses

[mjubiergo]

Dear community,

I am looking to combine similar addresses on my alteryx workflow. The addresses could be like '408 E 50TH ST' showing up 3 times under one column. If I have 1 dataset, what tool could I use to combine similar/same street addresses?

[NickSm]

Hey @mjubiergo ,  the Fuzzy Match tool in the join category is for situations like this.  There's a preset match style of "Address" that takes things like abbreviations and slight variances that could potentially still be the same address, and returns a match score.  You can then determine how to handle those matches, or consolidate them as in your example.

Can check out some help on it here:

https://help.alteryx.com/current/FuzzyMatch.htm

[mjubiergo]

Hi NickSm, thank you. I've tried this tool - but it seems I am not using it correctly. After using it, I get two columns with Street, and all my data set is gone. Have you encountered this issue? If so, how did you resolve?

[estherb47 · Accepted solution]

Hi @mjubiergo 

If the addresses match exactly, you can attach a Unique tool into your workflow, which will output the Unique addresses on the U output.

If they are close matches, then fuzzy is the way to go. It does result in a 2-column table. One column has the text, and the second is what it matches to.

Unique or Make Groups works well afterwards to get unique matches only.

Let me know if that helps

Cheers!

Esther