The select tool is an essential component of preparing data within Alteryx. It is useful for the main reasons:
- It can select columns that are necessary - When importing data into Alteryx from various sources, it is likely that some fields are not required or not useful either. The select tool can quickly hide these from the output, by unticking the boxes:
- It can also rename and reorder the columns - The dataset will probably have placeholder column headings, and so being able to rename and reorder the column headings for either general use, or for practical use to be able to join the datasets later proves very useful and is a vital function of the select tool:
- The tool can change the datatype of the different fields - Not all datasets are prepared perfectly, and as a result the fields within must be transformed appropriately. The datatype of the fields are important when manipulating the data further on, for example: trying to sum together strings that should actually be integers:
In general, the select tool is a very useful component of the data preparation process, and should be one of the first tools used when looking at a dataset.