Give unique identifier to each column in Alteryx

[KrishnaChithrathil]

Can we put some unique identifiers for each column in alteryx?

like this?

My requirement is i need to loop through each columns, to check if a value is present in it or not. I'll be having a different column order each time.

What I'm thinking is, If we've unique identifiers for each column, we can take 1, check for a particular value. If not present, check in 2.

Is this possible?

[grazitti_sapna]

Hi @KrishnaChithrathil, if you are just looking to find values from the nth columns, why don't you try transposing then filter that would give you results faster. Please take a look at the screenshot.

Thanks!

[grazitti_sapna]

@KrishnaChithrathil, if you are looking for the exact expected output then give this a try.

Thanks!

[KrishnaChithrathil]

@grazitti_sapna 

I understood what you meant.

Suppose, I want to identify where column-2 is. and need to perform some action to that column alone. The thing is column-2 can appear as the first column or the last column. It's not fixed. Can we do that?

[ArtApa]

Hi @KrishnaChithrathil - I think I don't fully understand the problem. Column names in Alteryx are unique identifiers themselves. You can't have duplicate column names. Also, it does not matter what is the order of the columns.

If you want to search for a specific value in different columns a Multi Field Formula tools can do that for you: https://help.alteryx.com/current/MultiFieldFormula.htm 

[KrishnaChithrathil]

@grazitti_sapna 

Column-1, Column-2, Column-3 is something I generated. Headers will change according to client requirement.

thanks for trying it out. 

[grazitti_sapna]

@KrishnaChithrathil, how do you identify which column is column 1, column 2, or column 3 in case they are shuffled?

As @ArtApa  said if the column names are the same they will automatically be renamed and appended by a digit for eg column1 and column2.

Can you please elaborate on the problem?

Thanks!

[KrishnaChithrathil]

Hello @ArtApa 

Suppose I want to take the Column-3 from this table and make all the Values to uppercase. But I don't know the position of this column-3.

I can't always assume this will be in third column.

[grazitti_sapna]

@KrishnaChithrathil as per the current scenario of uppercasing column 3 this may help you.

You can transpose your dataset then use the formula tool and write this formula.

if [Name]="Column-3" then Uppercase([Value]) else [Value] endif

The Name column will help you identify the column you are looking for and the Value column will transform your values as per the requirements.

Thanks!

[KrishnaChithrathil]

@grazitti_sapna @ArtApa 

yes, my bad. I'll try to explain it little more specific. will provide sample input that i'm using. I've removed the data keeping only the header names.

This is my excel.

This is how it gets loaded in Alteryx.

The thing is, we can't expect Country column in the F5 column. I may be in F3 or some other. And also we can expect some other columns would come in between these existing column.

Now how can i identify, in which column, the header Country falls.

I hope this is clear to you.