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Alteryx Designer Desktop Knowledge Base

Definitive answers from Designer Desktop experts.

Arbitrary File Specification in Analytic App

Alteryx_KB
Alteryx
Alteryx
Created

If your Analytic App has a File Browse option, you can limit what file types are shown to the user.  Choose the radio button “Arbitrary File Specification” and enter the file types to be shown. 

 

You can specify any set of file formats as options. This includes text files, spatial objects, images, etc. 

 

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The format to add a file type is a string of text describing the file type (this can be whatever you'd like), followed by a pipe character (|) and then an asterisk and the file extension.

 

Comma Seperated File (.csv)|*.csv

 

 

To include multiple file types, separate each file type with a pipe. 

 

 

Comma Seperated File (.csv)|*.csv|Text File (.txt)|*.txt

 

 

To allow any file type to be specified, use *.*



Comments
nrossin
8 - Asteroid

How would one specify multiple file extensions for one file type?

 

For example, to allow the user to select an Excel Workbook, the file extension could be either .xlsx or .xls. How do we set the File Browse tool to display either of those files?

 

Forcing the user to select between the two would be a poor design from a user experience standpoint.

ISUGraber
8 - Asteroid

@nrossin  did you get an answer to this question?  I'm looking through the Community to see this too but thought I'd ask!

lepome
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

@ISUGraber 
Does it not work to use the method provided?

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You may even be able to use custom text like I did.  When I actually go to open a file in Excel, the option is called Worksheets.

ISUGraber
8 - Asteroid

I think it did after I re-read it.  I was specifying it too closely IE:  " *.xlsx"  I changed that to "*.xls*" and it seemed to work

lepome
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Empirically, it seems the only restriction is that when you list more than one suffix between the pipes, you separate them with semicolons.

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