Hi, have a look at the Adjacent Feature Attributes option in the AttributeCreator or the AttributeManager. See also this blog post to learn more: FME Adjacent Feature Attributes: An Example of Reading Structured Text Files

Thank you Takashi, I saw this article a few minutes before your answer but I closed it because I thought "adjacent" was meant for geographic proximity.

Thank to you, I read this article carefully and it saved me.

Very powerfull this "Adjacent Feature Attributes" option !

Just one thing, I didn't find a solution to make it work in cascade mode, so I created 4 AttributeManager in serial (because there can be 4 blank cells maximum in my case) with conditional values:

1- If MyAttribute is missing --> Attribute Value: featuree-1].MyAttribute --> Output Attribute: MyAttribute2

2- If MyAttribute2 is missing --> Attribute Value: featuree-1].MyAttribute --> Output Attribute: MyAttribute3

3- If MyAttribute3 is missing --> Attribute Value: featuree-1].MyAttribute --> Output Attribute: MyAttribute4

4- If MyAttribute4 is missing --> Attribute Value: featuree-1].MyAttribute --> Output Attribute: MyAttribute5

Ideally, I would prefer a solution with one single AttributeManager that searches the last not empty value and that replace the value in the same attribute (not in a new attribute MyAttribute2, MyAttribute3,...)

But this is ok for this time ;)

I think that a single AttributeManager with this conditional value setting can propagate the attribute value from one feature to the subsequent features which don't have a value in the attribute.

I tried this, that doesn't work because FME creates a second attribute MyAttribute (with the same name).

Hi @christian_b

I think the behaviour you are seeing where 'Expand Merge Cells' not working correctly is related to a bug with merged cell reading in FME 2018.

We've fixed this bug in our recent FME 2019 beta builds (19215 and higher). If you are able to, please try using a newer version of FME to read your file.