Filtering not working when no records

[SteveKnapper]

Hello, I have a strange situation where my workflow is returning no records from an input (rightly as I am not expecting any records)

but then my filter to only process the records further is still trying to process the data.

I have tried putting a record count in between and filtering where count > 0 but it still ignores the filter

any suggestions

regards

steve

[BenMoss · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure I fully understand the problem?

You are filtering data, but then alteryx is still passing zero records through the process after the filter? Yes, this is what Alteryx will do, but it should be pretty quick in doing so, as there is no data.

If you want the workflow to stop running if the count is zero then consider using the TEST tool, and set the condition 'record count matches specific value' and then set the count to be zero.

Ben

[MarqueeCrew]

@BenMoss,

Testing for 0 records is a trick.  Perhaps a use case for a new CReW macro (if you would like to create one).  If you test for 0 records, then if 0 records comes through then there is no error.  

Cheers,

Mark

[AIChudnovsky]

Can you provide an example of this?

I'm running a batch macro to read in multiple sheets in an Excel file.  If a sheet is empty, it reads zero records and some of the tools error out (e.g., Select Records, Select).

[ChillEDog]

Can I tack on to this ?  A year+ later !

Exact same issue.  I have a filter for rows with certain field value to flow to a macro.  (This is in a batch macro which gets called one excel file at a time.  Different files have different columns.)

So when a file is passed to the b.m. which does *not* contain the filter value, the filter acts as it should, but it is as if an empty row gets passed to the macro, which then errors out because the empty row is not the expected structure.

I am not making any sense am I?  It's late.

In first screenshot you can see a smidgen of the empty row, columns [SAP Tax Code], [Seller VAT ID] etc.  The T case of the filter passes this empty row to macro "group eQuate rows", which was built on a set of rows (from another file type) with different columns.  Even tho no rows are passed in, a summarize tool inside the macro generates errors (2nd screenshot) because the fields it expects are not present in the empty row that is passed in.  I wouldn't expect the macro to do anything - there's no rows!!! - but that's not what happens.  Arrrghh!!

I thought, with the filter, I was preventing the macro from firing, if no rows pass the filter test.  But seems that's not how A works.    Appreciate any help!