I agree, it doesn't work. That error message even comes if you read and write an excel with fomulas dynamically (with column names as column position set to Yes). I can understand why the catch it as an error, but Safe probably need to take into account the .formula, .formatting, .hyperlink options.

Looks like you might need to write that formula as part of another featurewriter doing an update, with column position set to No.

Thanks Todd for confirming. I tried a second writer today but we don't have any column names, just a header with varying fields and values. I tried some workarounds based on this idea unsuccessfully. The number of rows written is also dynamic and they wanted the formula to be added in the last row of the report.

A different workaround is to add the results to the header via a fixed formula in the template. Luckily they just want to sum a few columns so I think I can use a simple formula such as =SUM(BD:BD) in the template header. I will do a full test tomorrow and see if this will act as an acceptable workaround.

Thanks again for your help,

Annette

@Todd Davis​ 

Any updates here?

Would we be able to Use attribute names as column positions with formulas?

really need this feature to work

Yarko

Hi Yarko,

It looks like this still isn't working. I did a test with another letter, M, to see if it was just being caused by Q and it appears that other letters do not cause the same error. However, when using M as the column position, the output was written to the L column which is still not correct. I've filed an issue report with our development team to resolve this issue.

Please let me know if you'd like me to link you to the issue so you are notified via email when it is resolved or submit a case requesting to be linked to FMEENGINE-68216.

Apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused @ukrsolid​, @Todd Davis​, and @annette2​

@chrisatsafe​  please link me to the issue

Thanks

Yarko

Done, you'll receive an email notification once the status of the reported issue changes.