I have a workflow that needs to bring data from an ESRI geodatabase, do some standard transforms, run a complex Excel model, and summarise in a final Excel output. Clearly FME will write to the model input sheet. But can I get FME to run the model as if it was a transformer, then pull the results out to the final summary? Thank you.
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FME's MS Excel reader/writer uses a 3rd party Excel library (libXL) which allows FME to read and write Excel data without having MS Office installed. This means FME's Excel writer will not trigger an update of formula or models. You need to open the worksheet to do that.
However, my guess would be that you could use a command line option or VBA script to force a spreadsheet to recalculate formulae or run a model. Then you could use the SystemCaller transformer to run the script after your have written the data using the FeatureWriter transformer. Someone with good Excel knowledge might be able to help with that.
Maybe start fme with a start up script to open the excel sheet, and assuming the sheet updates on open, read the sheet.
How to open an excel with a start up script is described in the forum multiple times.