Make Columns Tool

Use Make Columns to take rows of data and arrange them into multiple columns. You can specify how many columns to create and whether you want to arrange records horizontally or vertically.

This tool is useful for reporting or display purposes where you want to organize data to fit nicely within a table. For example, if you don't want to display a list of 50 records, you can use Make Columns to organize those records into a table of 5 columns and 10 rows.

Tip

This tool has a One Tool Example. Visit Access Sample Workflows to learn how to access this and many other examples directly in Designer Cloud.

Configure the Tool

Number of Columns: Specify the number of columns to create. For each existing column, the tool creates a new column with "Column_#" pre-pended to the column name.
- If the input contains 2 columns and you specify 2 columns (with no group specification), 4 columns come out of the tool.
- If the input contains 2 columns and you specify 2 columns in addition to 1 group field, 3 columns come out of the tool.
Choose to Arrange Columns horizontally or vertically:
- Horizontally: The tool orders records by their incoming position and then populates cells from left to right until they fill your specified number of columns. After that, the tool wraps records to the next row and continues arranging them from left to right.
- Vertically: The tool orders records by their incoming position and then populates cells from top to bottom in rows. The tool wraps to the specified number of columns.
If there isn't an exact match of records, [Null] values fill the set.
Columns to Group By (Optional): When you specify a group column, the tool sorts the records by the Group By values and then arranges them according to their incoming cell position across columns for the particular group.

Examples

Ungrouped

Table 21. Input Data Stream

Food
Apple
Banana
Cherry
Date
Asparagus
Broccoli
Carrot
Daikon

Table 22. Arrange Horizontally: The Number of Columns is set to 2.

Column_1_Food	Column_2_Food
Apple	Banana
Cherry	Date
Asparagus	Broccoli
Carrot	Daikon

Table 23. Arrange Vertically: The Number of Columns is set to 2.

Column_1_Food	Column_2_Food
Apple	Asparagus
Banana	Broccoli
Cherry	Carrot
Date	Daikon

Grouped

Table 24. Input Data Stream

Group	Food
Fruit	Apple
Fruit	Cherry
Fruit	Banana
Fruit	Date
Vegetable	Asparagus
Vegetable	Carrot
Vegetable	Broccoli
Vegetable	Daikon

Table 25. Arrange Horizontally: The Group column from the input data stream is the column selected under Columns to Group By in the tool configuration.

Group	Column_1_Food	Column_2_Food
Vegetable	Asparagus	Broccoli
Vegetable	Carrot	Daikon
Fruit	Apple	Banana
Fruit	Cherry	Date

Table 26. Arrange Vertically: The Group column from the input data stream is the column selected under Columns to Group By in the tool configuration.

Group	Column_1_Food	Column_2_Food
Vegetable	Asparagus	Carrot
Vegetable	Broccoli	Daikon
Fruit	Apple	Cherry
Fruit	Banana	Date

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