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Issue when writing data back to Tables and Named Ranges in Excel files

dbaldacchino1
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I’ve seen a few other posts discussing this or similar issues when it comes to writing data to tables in an Excel file, which is now affecting me on a current project. There is a similar problem in named ranges as well, although slightly less problematic. I went ahead and filed a support ticket but in the meantime, decided to post here in case someone knows of a solution.

Every time data is written to tables and/or named ranges and a template file is used, the resulting file contains errors that Excel tries to fix upon opening the resulting file. If tables are involved and cells are referenced elsewhere, links to the first table end up broken as you can see below:

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Here is the resulting error upon opening the Excel file: 

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Data seems to be written as expected, but having to click through an error when opening the Excel file, plus the potential of losing links to table data, is not a good thing. An example workspace template is attached so you can play around and test on your end (in version 2024.1.1.1). Spot anything that can fix this issue? Thanks.

Best answer by dbaldacchino1

I was able to finally test 2025.0 and it doesn’t seem to resolve the original issue. The resulting file still has problems that Excel tries to fix when opening it. However this time it only mentions tables, and unfortunately cell references to both tables break:

On the bright side, it seems that named ranges are functioning properly, whereas tables get invisibly mangled.

After Excel attempts a repair of a file produced by FME 2025, we end up with duplicate table “ranges”, although there’s only 1 instance of each table:

 

As you can see in the top image, we end up with #REF! errors for all table references, even though the original “range” of the tables still exist, with the addition of the new renamed duplicates. As you can see below after the repair of a file produced in FME 2024.1.1.1, the table “range” is duplicated only for the first table, and as such cell reference to the second table continue to function (see the image in the original post of this thread): 

So in summary, things seem worse in FME 2025 when it comes to tables, but improved for Named Ranges. I might ditch tables altogether and transition to Named Ranges for the current task I’m trying to accomplish.

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dbaldacchino1
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  • March 5, 2025

Just tested the new 2025.0...it seems the Excel reader is broken completely :(

danilo_fme
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dbaldacchino1
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  • March 7, 2025

In case someone is reading the above re: the Excel reader not working in 2025: I found the problem! It’s a bit perplexing and have never seen anything like it, nor does it affect older versions of FME for some reason.

Lesson Learned #1: Pay attention to the log files. These often look like a bunch of garbage, but they can contain extremely valuable clues. In this example, the reader failure text wasn’t very helpful:

As I continued testing and observing the log, the following stood out like a sore thumb:

Error prepending 'C:\Program Files\FME\2025.0\plugins\' to path environment variable - resulting path would exceed 2047 characters: 'C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH\;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\120\Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\;C:\windows\CCM;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\150\Tools\Binn\;C:\Program Files\dotnet\;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\NVIDIA NvDLISR;C:\Program Files\TortoiseGit\bin;C:\Program Files\FME\2020.1.1\;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Program Files\pyRevit-Master\bin;C:\Users\david.baldacchino\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;

By coincidence, I had noticed this system variable while making changes due to some totally unrelated testing. It seems that the above Revit addin installer is somehow causing the above when installing, creating a lot of duplicate entries (same problem existed on other machines I cross-checked). Anyway, removing all that real garbage fixed the problem, and now FME 2025.0 can happily read Excel files!

kailinatsafe
DanAtSafe
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dbaldacchino1
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  • March 7, 2025

I was able to finally test 2025.0 and it doesn’t seem to resolve the original issue. The resulting file still has problems that Excel tries to fix when opening it. However this time it only mentions tables, and unfortunately cell references to both tables break:

On the bright side, it seems that named ranges are functioning properly, whereas tables get invisibly mangled.

After Excel attempts a repair of a file produced by FME 2025, we end up with duplicate table “ranges”, although there’s only 1 instance of each table:

 

As you can see in the top image, we end up with #REF! errors for all table references, even though the original “range” of the tables still exist, with the addition of the new renamed duplicates. As you can see below after the repair of a file produced in FME 2024.1.1.1, the table “range” is duplicated only for the first table, and as such cell reference to the second table continue to function (see the image in the original post of this thread): 

So in summary, things seem worse in FME 2025 when it comes to tables, but improved for Named Ranges. I might ditch tables altogether and transition to Named Ranges for the current task I’m trying to accomplish.

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