@_ds​ You should probably file a support case with your local FME provider so they can try and determine the cause of the issue. You should include a copy of your workspace some sample data and the offending Excel template

Thanks for the reply Mark...I'll look to find out who the local FME provider is at this end.

Of interest however (I hope!) is that I've found the source of the issue for me. In the Excel writer I'd edited the output to set a field as a Number and set the format to include a #,### (1,000 separator). This was the cause of the issue. If I remove this my workbenches work fine, so this seems to be the culprit.

Edit: the workbench also works ok if use the '1,000 separator' but don't use a template

Another quirk I noticed is that I wanted to set my date field to dd/mm/yyyy, so I used the edit function in the Excel writer to set this format. But regardless of what this is set to it always comes out as yyyy-mm-dd. A bit frustrating but something I can live with.

Cheers!

Hi @_ds​ from what I can see there are no known issues in FME 2021.x to do with the Excel Writer and template files, but we had a very similar issue in FME 2022.1 that has now been resolved as of FME 2023.0 b23144 - WIN64 and FME 2022.2 b22742 - WIN64. I recommend installing one of these versions or newer and testing our your workspace to see if the template file you're using still causes you issues.

If this doesn't fix the issue for you, then please follow the steps that Mark outlined above.

Hi Dan, unfortunately I am not at liberty to download different versions as I work for a large organisation and we get the version we are given! And with regards Mark's suggestion of reporting it to my local vendor, I've been advised by one of my colleagues (who knows more about our organisation's FME situation), "...I don't believe we procure specific FME Desktop support as part of our licencing arrangement...".

Still, I realise the issue isn't the template so much as the 1,000 separator. So long as I leave that out I'm good. Maybe we'll get v2022 or v20233 in a couple of years :)

@_ds​ If you're able to share a sample workspace and data with us here, we might be able to help with the issue here and suggest some workarounds.

What is the specific issue you are running into with the 1,000 separator? Does it fail to write out the file when you have that present in your data values?

Hi Dan, I've uploaded a sample workspace and data in the attached zip file. Some points to note:

• The writer that has the 1,000 separator is called 'FME_DS_Extract'
• My workbench is extracting from Oracle; for the sample data/workbench I've add an Excel reader which is the data as extracted from Oracle in the first step in my (not shared) workbench;
• The data shared here is anonymised
• The issue is that when I use a template in the Excel writer AND I select the 1,000 separator in the Excel writer (using it in 'column 4'), FME generates an 'Error Running Translation' and won't write;
• This issue occurs when I'm working with ~31-32k rows of data, hence the large size of the source data;
• The issue DOESN'T occur if I DON'T select the 1,000 separator while writing to a template;
• The issue also DOESN'T occur if I write directly to Excel (i.e. no template) but DO select the 1,000 separator
• A bonus issue that despite selecting dd/mm/yyyy as the format for column 10 (in the 'FME_DS_Extract' Excel writer), it still extracts as yyyy-mm-dd

I'm no FME expert but I feel that I've tried everything to get this to work, so it must be an issue with FME, rather than 'user error'. I'm happy to be proven wrong though!

Thanks!

If you want the 1000 separator you can set all of column 4 to use the thousand separator in the template sheet and then remove the custom format from the excel writer.

Great suggestion @ebygomm​! I can confirm that works perfectly as a workaround for FME 2021.2. I attached a sample template workspace for you so you can have that as a reference.

I can also confirm that this issue was resolved in FME 2022.2+, so if you do plan on upgrading eventually then this won't be an issue for you.

Thanks both, and I pleased to say that great minds think alike as the work around I used was indeed setting the 1,000 separator in the template.

Any indication why the date format doesn't seem to be working? Or is that something else that's been fixed in 2022.2+?

Cheers!