Community Spring Cleaning week is here! Join your fellow Maveryx in digging through your old posts and marking comments on them as solved. Learn more here!

Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

Find answers, ask questions, and share expertise about Alteryx Designer Desktop and Intelligence Suite.
SOLVED

Dynamically Rename Output Files

Awill39
7 - Meteor

New to Alteryx, and not exactly sure where to post this. I have a workflow that gives me a report in Excel, as well as a Powerpoint file. I was wondering if there was a way to rename the files as they are output.

 

Thanks,

 

Aaron

9 REPLIES 9
JohnJPS
15 - Aurora

Yes indeed.  In the Config Panel for the output tool, towards the bottom, you will see options for supplying the name of your output using a column. Thus, just before the output tool, you could place a Formula tool where you create a new column called "OutputFileName" (or whatever you want to call it)... then supply whatever you want right there... (you could even base it off of the values of other variables in your data set, should you so desire).

PeterGoldey
11 - Bolide

That should work for powerpoint.

For Excel, won't that rename the "sheet" name, but not the actual file name?

JohnJPS
15 - Aurora

For an Excel file, you can click the dropdown saying "Append Suffix to File/Table Name" and select "Change Entire File Path" instead.

SeanAdams
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Here's an example - where the file name & sheet name is coming from the workflow.   This not only writes to 2 different excel files, but in workbook A it also creates and writes to 2 different sheets.   I've put a standard export to excel; and a dynamic version  (which dynamically creates the filename) on the same workflow so that you can see the differences.

 

The trick is, like John said, to use the "Change entire file path".   Create a formula field which creates a full filename (excel file | sheet name), and then use this on the output.

 

Have a look - if this solves your problem, please could you mark this as solved, or if you still have questions, please feel free to reply and we can work together to get you to the solution you need.

 

Cheers

Sean

Sharbucks
6 - Meteoroid

Unfortunately, I'm on Alteryx 10.5 (with no way to update anytime soon) - is it possible to please upload one that is compatible with older versions? Or provide screenshots of your method?

SeanAdams
17 - Castor
17 - Castor

Hey @Sharbucks

The version issue is a common challenge that people face and the solution is easy.

Open up the Alteryx file in Notepad ++ or your favourite text editor

Then change the version number in line 2 or 3

Save

Done 

 

:-)

This post should help:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Knowledge-Base/Adjusting-Alteryx-Files-for-Different-Versio...

 

Sharbucks
6 - Meteoroid

Thank you - this helped!

Bobe
7 - Meteor

Any chance there's a way to name PDF reports output from Alteryx dynamically based on a field as well? In reviewing the options within the Render tool nothing jumps out at me. 

trettelap
8 - Asteroid

I would also be interested in this...any luck?

Labels