Field length of "real" data of importing Excel with descriptor rows

[ansonwun]

Hi. I am importing an Excel (xls, not xlsx) with the first 10 rows containing some basic, unstructured description of the data/file. The real data, about 20+ columns, start after that. When I read the Excel in, I noticed that cells with length exceeding 256 characters do not seem to be imported - they end up being blank.

If I remove those first 10 rows manually the data imported fine. But I'd rather not do that as I need to bulk import multiple file with the same structure. May I know if there's any work around?

Thanks in advance!

[ansonwun]

Thanks @LordNeilLord

Hm... I can't seem to find that Legacy option in mine. Is it something that I need to install separately? I'm attaching what's on mine (version 2018.1.3.42973)

EDIT: I managed to get the Legacy driver by installing "2007 Office System Driver". But the 2 cells are still shown as blanks. 

[LordNeilLord]

Try using this driver instead, it seems to solve a lot of excel based issues....

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13255

[ansonwun]

Thanks @LordNeilLord! This 2010 driver set works like a charm!

[brylant]

Hi,

I've just had the same issue, so cells with some text, which exceed 255 characters were 'blanked' in Alteryx. Using 'Microsoft Excel Legacy (.xlsx) did not help at all, cause it still cut cell to 255 characters only. Only way how to show full length of text is to change source file into Comma-Delimited Text Files (.csv) format. Just open an excel and save as .csv and change field length to 1000 characters or more.