How to get Alteryx to keep file format

[dngnc7]

I have attached an example of my file format. When I import into Alteryx (input tool), and use Text to Columns to parse out the file, it does not maintain the format of the file. 

Any suggestions on how I can fix this? Also, the file has a .FILE extension

Any help is VERY appreciated. 

Thanks in advance.

[KGT]

The file didn't seem to upload. It's stuck on (Virus scan in progress...).

I expect this is choosing the correct delimiter. You can use \s,\n,\t in the T2C tool as delimiter if needed. Without seeing what is wrong, I don't really know more though. Can you upload a workflow package using this example format? (Options > Export Workflow).

[OTrieger]

@dngnc7 

When you deal with txt format files you will have the choice of input it a csv format. By default the delimiter is set to , however you can change it as @KGT mentioned above, or you can actually type in the delimiter that you want such as ; or | or #  or whatever it will be.

Or you can select \0 which means no delimiter and then you will need to use the Text To Column tool.

A good way to know what is the delimiter is to open the txt file in Notepad or any other text editor and check which one is used.

[dngnc7]

The delimiter is a tilde (~) and I have tried both ways using it as the delimiter from the input tool and \0 delimiter and using TTC tool to parse out. My problem is not parsing the file but I need the white space in between to remain to keep the alignment from the text file.

[OTrieger]

@dngnc7 

Can you make 2 snippets, one how the data looks in the original file and how you would like to have it?

If the delimiter is ~ and when using it it you get the needed split of the data, why will you need the white space. Alteryx is not requires any white spaces.

[dngnc7]

The whitespace represents empty columns that may or may not have data in them, meaning each day there could be a different column amount (hope that makes sense). So the whitespace is needed in the event there is data to not overlap with the numbers at the end of the text file. 

[OTrieger]

Well, when you parse based on delimiter if a column is empty it will be empty as there going to be 2 delimiters next to each other. So still not understand what is the issue. If the delimiter is ~ and there are 5 columns then you will have 5 ~ weather you have data or not

[KGT]

The example file has uploaded now, but it doesn't have ~ in it and has 2 spaces where you had the tilde in the screenshot example. The area in between the 2 rows has tabs and so \t will be the delimiter there.