Question

Is there a maximum number of worksheets that can be created with an Excel writer?


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I am trying to create separate worksheets using individual Excel writers. I have 40 total. The workbench runs fine, but when I go to open the Excel file I get an Excel error stating "We found a problem with some content. Do you want to recover as much as we can". If I click yes, the file will open, but I lose all of my formatting. All 40 sheets are there, but no formatting on any of them. If I disable the writers for 5 of the sheets, I will not get the Excel error and all of my formatting will be on the 35 sheets. I've tried disabling different writers and combinations of writers, so it's not an individual writer issue. If I try to do 36 sheets or more, I get the same error.


3 replies

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Excel sheets limited by available memory (Excel specifications and limits).

I tried to output an excel file with 1000 sheets. No error was shown when opening.

The reason for the error may be elsewhere, If possible, It is best to provide sample data, templates, and fme's version information.

Userlevel 5
Badge +25

Just for clarification: are all 40 writers writing to the same Excel file? And do you mean writers or feature types?

Either way, check out Fanouts, I think they'll save you lots of time.

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I was actually using 40 writers, however, when I was writing a response here of why I had to use 40 writers, I thought of a way to narrow it down to 3 writers, which I then did (hoping it might solve the issue), however, exact same problem. If I try to write more than 35 pages, I get an Excel error and lose all of my formatting. If I disable 5 of my transformers to eliminate 5 pages (back to 35) everything works perfectly.

Next, since I got this down to 3 writers, I tried writing to 2 different files. I wrote 8 pages to one file and 32 to another. This works perfectly with no errors.

I'm using FME Workbench 2018. I'm satisfied to writing to 2 separate files for now, but I am curious as to if there is a solution to this. I'll be more than happy to try additional things if anyone has any further suggestions.

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