Join returns too many records

[oracleoftemple]

This is my first day using Alteryx. I'm trying to Join transaction level purchase data with data about the vendor.  The Join tool seems to be returning way too many records.  My left input is transactions, and it's coming from four separate Excel files (I'm using the wildcard (*) to bring in all 4).  In total, there are 259,980 records.  My right input is vendors - there are 45,173 of these, and they're coming all from one file.  My Join output looks like this: there are 133,631 records in the L output, 878,918 records in the J output, and 33,362 records in the R output.  I wouldn't have expected the total of all three of those outputs to be that high.  If the Join had matched each transaction record with a vendor, it should have returned 259,980 records.  Even if there were no matches, there only should have been 305,153 records (259,980 + 45,173).  Why is the number of records in the output so high?

[oracleoftemple]

If I use the Transform>Summarize tool, does that mean I need to Input the vendor data twice?  Once to summarize, and once to join it back to get the rest of the fields?

[oracleoftemple]

If I use the Transform - Summarize tool, does that mean I need to Input the vendor data twice?  Once to summarize, and once to join it back to get the rest of the fields?

[KOBoyle · Accepted solution]

No. You can have more than one connection coming out of any tool (only input anchors are limited accept to one connection, in most cases).