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Carriage Return (aka New Line or Line Break) being ignored in Report Table Tool

I know this has been posted before, but the posts are fairly old, and I have just confirmed with Support that it is still an issue.  Seems to be a pretty basic request, so I'm putting it out there again under this new heading.


The issue is that if you have data in a field, and you have that data separated by a new line (\n), it will show up fine in a browse tool, or pretty much any other output (database file, Office Document file, etc.). But if you try to use the Table Tool under Reporting, it ignores the line break and strings the data together.


Example:

The field data looks like this in a browse or most other outputs:

Hello, my name is 

Michael Barone

and I love

Alteryx

 

But when I try to pull this field into a Table Tool, it shows up like this:
Hello, my name is Michael Barone and I love Alteyrx

 

Putting this out here again in hopes that it gets lots and lots of stars so it gets put on the road map!!

 

21 Comments
JessicaS
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Status changed to: New Idea

Hi @mbarone,

 

I've moved your post over to the ideas section for greater visibility.

 

Thanks,

mbarone
16 - Nebula
16 - Nebula

Thanks Jessica!

apolly
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Status changed to: Under Review

Thank you for raising this, I can certainly see how that is frustrating! We do have plans to refresh the Table tool in the future and we’ll be sure to keep this issue in mind as we’re planning out those improvements.

mbarone
16 - Nebula
16 - Nebula

Awesome, thanks Polly!

kirby900
5 - Atom
I'm bumping into this shortcoming right now, and it is indeed frustrating. Support for line feeds in table cells is near the top of my wish list.
kelvin_law1
9 - Comet

Beside the report table tool, the report text tool  need to support new line feed too. Thanks!!

mbarone
16 - Nebula
16 - Nebula

Hi @apolly, can you look into this to see how far off we are from getting it implemented?  Seems like it would've been a slam dunk to get it in with all the recent reporting tool changes released with 2018.3.  It's still a big barrier to us for moving more of our reports over to Alteryx.  

Thanks.

apolly
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Hi, I spoke with one of our engineers just now and the issue could live in two places. One location is not bad to fix, the other is a larger issue. We will investigate to determine which location the fix needs to be made and I hope to get a fix out for this in the near future.
mbarone
16 - Nebula
16 - Nebula

Thank you; I'll check back in a few months if I don't hear anything!

kelvin_law1
9 - Comet

Hi @apolly, I found some more issue for the table tool and would like to see if you can implement them too.

- I input some leading spaces in a column as indent for formatting purpose.  However, once I put that column in the table tool, all the leading spaces will be gone.  Would it be possible to display it as it is so that I can keep the formatting that I designed?

- I tried to add a blank row in the table by inputting some blank spaces in a column.  But when I display the table, that blank row becomes a very thin line.  Any other way to show a blank row using the same font size for formatting purpose?

Please let me know if you want more information, thanks very much!!