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Excel Reader - select Worksheets to read by order in XLS/XLSX file rather than W

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tim_wood
Contributor

***Note from Migration:***

Original Title was: Excel Reader - select Worksheets to read by order in XLS/XLSX file rather than Worksheet name


I would like to be able to choose the Worksheet to read from an XLS/XLSX file by the order it appears in the file, rather than have to specify the name. I have recently had to batch process a large number of Excel files where the Worksheet names were not known. There didn't seem to be a satisfactory way of dealing with this (I searched the Knowledge Center) so I end up creating 2 Workspaces and using the SchemaReader, WorkspaceRunner and FeatureReader to do what I needed. Even then, the process crashes randomly if I try to process more than 2 pairs of Excel files at a time (FME 2016.1, need to try in FME 2017).

It would have been a lot easier if I could have specified the Worksheet number in the Excel Reader, as I was always only reading the first Worksheet and the name wasn't important. OK, so I only had one Worksheet in each Excel file, but for multiple sheets you could specify which numbers you wanted e.g. read sheets 1,3,4,6 (or zero based if you prefer). Worksheet name could be exposed as a Format Attribute.

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2 replies

david_r
Evangelist
  • March 22, 2017

Great idea. It's also a hassle when you have to read several Excel files and the sheet names differ slightly between them, this could be very useful in those cases.

Maybe a format attribute like "xslx_sheet_id" could be implemented on the dynamic reader without too much trouble? It would be a nice complement to the existing "xlsx_row_id", I think.

The sheet name is actually already exposed in fme_feature_type.


revesz
Contributor
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  • Contributor
  • November 3, 2021

I highly support the idea.

A couple of my cases:

  • Users regularly timestamp the sheet names and keep the first sheet as the active one.
  • Files created in different Locale (French, German), the default tabs are different (Feuil1, Tabelle1).

There are workarounds (when it is not possible to inluence the creators) but they usually turn out quite dirty.


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