Output excel file hiding column names (row 1)

Strange behavior. Do you use a template or do you write to existing file?

If you don't use a template file, maybe using a template file will solve your issue. But i’m curious what causes this behavior.

Hi @emerson_styles Unfortunately this is a known issue, filed as FMEENGINE-82549. The work-around is to set the Row Height to 0 on the Feature Type.

https://support.safe.com/hc/en-us/articles/25407724250509-Known-Issues-in-FME-2024-x

I can verify that this issue is also “following” up to FME Flow 2024.0. If you publish a workbench with a excel writer and choose the Data Download service, if you run the script and then download the resulting excel file then the first row has the value 0 in row height and is being hidden.

I’m seeing this same issue in output from an Excel writer in Form 2024.1.3.0.

The workspace was created in an older version of FME Form/Desktop/Workbench, and there doesn’t appear to be any way for set Row Height to 0 in the Feature Types. If I add a new Excel Writer, I do get that option, so it seems to me that the Excel Writer is actually an older version that doesn’t support the work-around to the known issue?

Is there a way to upgrade writers, in addition to transformers, without replacing and reconfiguring them completely?

I referenced Set the Row Height to 0 on the Feature Type | Community to see how to set the Row Height to 0, as it isn’t an option for me in the current writer feature types.

Hi ​@phoeffler There’s no row height available when you check “Field Names Row Formatting”? I am unaware of a version of FME that does not have that as an option.

Also if 0 is not working for you, try setting a height that makes sense for the data you are using. For me font height of 14 ensured that the Header Row was readable and no fiddling required after writing.
Hope that helps!

 

Hi ​@crutledge, thanks for your prompt reply.

I have two XLSXWs in my workspace, one is version 2022.2 and the other is version 2023.0 (I can get the builds of each if necessary).

I’m not sure what I’m missing here:
 

If I add a new Excel Writer, I get this:
 

Hi ​@phoeffler Well that goes to show how long my memory lasts :D 

For the 2022 writer you could hook in an Excel Styler and define the row height=14 to start:
ExcelStyler

For the 2023 use the new Excel writer (or right click on the existing one and hit “Upgrade Transformer”) and try defining the Row Height=14 to start

Does that work for  you? Hope so.

Hey ​@crutledge, your memory is probably still longer than mine, especially when it comes to many FME-related topics!

When I right click on either of the writers or their feature types, or look under Upgradeable Transformers, I don’t see an option to upgrade any writers. I’m hoping that they will or can be upgradeable at some point, as that can be really helpful for transformers (except in some cases, such as StringCaseChanger, where the upgrade changes the case setting, in my case dramatically - but I digress).

All of that aside, the ExcelStyler may be the fix for me in all of these cases, and/or I will take another look at Excel template files. I’ll give them a try before long and get back to you.

Thanks again for your help!!

I couldn’t get Excel templates to work the way I wanted to. One of the writers accumulates results across multiple workspace runs, so I couldn’t use it for that one at all.

The ExcelStyler was less than ideal because I have two writers with ten feature types each.

In the Navigator, right click each writer, Update Writer…, Parameters…, I found that I could add the Field Names Row Format there, but if I enabled it and set the Row Height to 0 or 14 and clicked OK, Form would immediately hard-crash. The recovery files never contain anything. Eventually, I found that I could enable the option and not set a value, OK, Save, and it would successfully update the writer. I could then go back and add a Row Height value and save that, without it crashing.

Update and Upgrade seem to be conflated here, and elsewhere, in a confusing mishmash.

Finally, I could then go into each of the feature types and set the setting there, which did ultimately fix the problem.

What a headache. I’m running into many things that are not very backwards-compatible within FME, unfortunately.

Thanks for your help. In the end it took a lot of clicking and crashing and persistence.