Alteryx for Excel Users: Determine the full path and filename

[WayneWooldridge]

To find the full path and filename of a saved file in Excel, you use the =CELL function.

In Alteryx, you use a Field Info Tool toget this information:

The Field InfoTool allows you to see in tabular form the name of fields in a file as well as the field order, field type, and field size.

Name: field names within the file

Type: type of data field

Size: length of a data field

Scale: with respect to fixed decimal data types, scale refers to the digits of precision

Source: contains the full path and filename

Description: may or may not contain information; you can add a description via the Select tool

We're only interested in the Source field and this information will be the same for each field.

Using a Sample Tool, we select just the first record:

Notice the data in Source begins with 'File:'. We don't want that in the final output so we'll use a SUBSTRING function in the expression of a Formula tool to clean it up. Complete the workflow with a Select tool so we only get the Source field:

I'll mention here you can use the Directory Toolto find the full path and filenames in a directory.

Select the directory you want to search. File Specification has wildcard characters so you can limit your search to files containing specific character patterns or file types. In the example below, let's set up the File Specification to only return files with the '.xlsx' file extension:

We're only interested in the field 'FullPath' (first column) so we'll use a Select tool to drop the remaining fields.

While the Directory tool returns multiple filenames, it will not contain aworksheet name if the file is an Excel file. To get that information, you'll need to use the Field Info Tool as we did above.