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Tool Mastery | Find Replace

MattD
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)
Created

This article is part of the Tool Mastery Series, a compilation of Knowledge Base contributions to introduce diverse working examples for Designer Tools. Here we’ll delve into uses of the Find Replace Tool on our way to mastering the Alteryx Designer:

Find Replace.png

The Find Replace Tool is one of those tools that goes relatively unused and uncelebrated until you stumble into a data blending technique that would be extremely difficult without it – at which point, it becomes your favorite tool in the Designer. You can find it in the Join Category and it’ll make easy string substitutions in your data that would otherwise require a herculean effort to work around. Today, we celebrate Find Replace as a hero:

 

hero.gif

Find Replace to the rescue

 

  • Make effortless HTML or ASCII substitutions (attached in Find Replace.yxzp):

 

HTML Character Replacement.jpg

 

 

  • Use look up tables to standardize data (attached in Find Replace.yxzp):

 

Find and replace specific targets.PNG

 

 

By now, you should have expert-level proficiency with the Find Replace Tool! If you can think of a use case we left out, feel free to use the comments section below! Consider yourself a Tool Master already? Let us know at community@alteryx.com if you’d like your creative tool uses to be featured in the Tool Mastery Series.

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Comments
deargle
7 - Meteor

Your second figure shows the tool configured to replace with the filed Replacement, but this field is not present in the input data shown in the figure.

RichoBsJ
11 - Bolide

Hi @deargle, 'Replacement' field is the Text Input 'Lookup Table'.

Cheers!

Lewis
5 - Atom

Why would the top line of the output not be '11 North Warren Circircle Lisbon Falls.....', as it should pick up the Cir in circle and change it circle?

 

Thanks

 

Lewis

RichoBsJ
11 - Bolide

Hi @Lewis,

 

actually, it would be Circlecle haha

 

I think the option 'Match Whole Word Only' was enabled in the configuration when they got those results, but it was disabled when they took the screenshot

 

Peace

 

Ricardo

mhart
7 - Meteor

does this work to replace a column header? In one of my existing workflows built, one of the columns names was "Department", and the source data has since changed from department to "Business Unit". 

 

Is there a way to rename every instance of the column name "Department" to "Business Unit"?

 

TIA!

 

DfloDBDB
7 - Meteor

You didn't discuss much about the Append part of find & replace

HowardHan
5 - Atom

very helpful. do we have a tool to find and replace multi-fields? 

Flo_G
7 - Meteor

Just wanted to flag that the Lookup List attached in the workflow has a double entry for  

 

Not that it impacts the functioning of the tool, just saw that as I used the same list in my workflow and noticed the small issue 🙂

khala1391
5 - Atom

thanks for good example

Ashutosh
6 - Meteoroid

onehelp ?

I am also trying to make screenshot like you did to capture some of the events in my workflow to document it.. can you help me how you did it

Ane
7 - Meteor

thank you!

lepome
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@Ashutosh 

The images in the article are not off-the-shelf screenshots.  What he did to generate those was to take shots of the data as viewed in the Results windows of the respective tools, and then use Comment tools with those images as backgrounds.

 

2022-05-23_16-19-58.png



Ashutosh
6 - Meteoroid

@lepome -you are awesome.
Thanks for the help - I figured it out when I was making a not on Wordpad. then it clicked on my mind that I could take a screenshot and use it in the comment box as a background image.

And for the Line behind it - connector line: I was thinking about as well. Then gave a thought about it and came to the conclusion @MattD must have used the browse tool or any other tool to connect with it and moved it to Back before using the Comment tool.

 

tasc4166
5 - Atom

How can we use the replace table to remove parentheses? I am unsure what replacement value I should input to recieve a blank space out of the replacement table.

FláviaB
Alteryx Community Team
Alteryx Community Team

Hi @tasc4166! I think you should post this questions in our Designer Discussions board for more visibility. 😉

mvtejano
7 - Meteor

This is good and thank you.

srilakshmi123
7 - Meteor

You didn't discuss much about the Append part of find & replace