Hi @sammy​! I spoke to our developer about this, and it looks like this functionality isn't yet supported. Sorry, I know it was mentioned in a recent webinar, but it looks like this was a misunderstanding on our part.

As it stands, the writer does not 'insert' rows in the same way that Excel will create a new row and renumber following ones - that would require a more complex implementation, and we're unsure if the library we use even supports this.

Probably not an ideal solution for you, but you might have to break out that table into a separate sheet.

I've added this as an enhancement request in our Ideas Forum. Feel free to vote for the idea and add additional information about your requirements for this.

If there's any progress on supporting this functionality, we'll post updates on this thread and on the ideas forum. Apologies again for the mix up during the webinar!

Here is my solution using openpyxl:

 

• ExcelReader brings in the data that I want to write out to the template table.
• StatisticsCalculator counts the total number of rows of data that I want to put into the template table.
• PythonCaller runs the code to insert the necessary number of rows and then copy the formatting to those newly inserted rows.
• FeatureHolder makes sure that PythonCaller completes before moving on.
• TestFilter removes the extra blank row added in by FeatureHolder.
• ExcelWriter writes the data out to the newly saved Excel sheet (that has the correct number of rows and correct formatting) and starts writing out to the correct column & row.

 

This is the PythonCaller (code pasted without comments because I kept getting an error with the comments in):

 

import fme
import fmeobjects
from openpyxl import load_workbook
from copy import copy
 
def InsertRows(feature):
    wb = load_workbook('Sample_Template.xlsx')
    ws = wb.active
    default_num_rows = 7
    table_first_row = 17
    if feature.getAttribute('_count') > default_num_rows:
        rows_to_add = feature.getAttribute('_count') - default_num_rows
    else:
        rows_to_add = 0
    insert_above_row = table_first_row + 1   
    if rows_to_add != 0:
        ws.insert_rows(insert_above_row, amount = rows_to_add)
        end_unformat_range = insert_above_row + rows_to_add
        unformat_range = range(insert_above_row, end_unformat_range, 1)
        for current_row in unformat_range: 
            col_list = b'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F']
            for current_col in col_list:
                current_cell = current_col + str(current_row)
                format_cell = current_col + str(table_first_row)
                ws current_cell]._style = copy(ws format_cell]._style)
    wb.save('Sample_Template_Correct_Rows.xlsx')
    pass

 And this is what the output looks like:

You can read the template in your workspace, get row.max using statistics calculator, join/merge (1-1) with you data, calculate a row attribute that starts at (row.max+1) and use that in the writer under Row Number Attribute.