Bug with Excel Writer (and appender) Nodes

I have noted that the excel writer and appender nodes does not properly write correct “excel tab names” in case these contain “<” or “>” as part of the name.
e.g. a desired tab names like “demoout” will end up as "“demo_in_out”, so “<” and “>” are translated into “_” in the actual excel sheets tabname.

Edit: the same is true for “*”

likely a problem with character set or similar, but in this case at least a warning should appear.

KNIME 3.7.1 / Windows 7 SP1

1 Like

Hello @matthias.albus -

Thanks for the feedback, and for the detailed instructions on how to reproduce the problem.

It looks like certain characters aren’t supported in Excel sheet names within Excel itself (for example, *[]\:?/). Having KNIME change these to an underscore may well be intended behavior to avoid an error, but in this case, as you mention, a warning message would be appropriate.

Other special characters that are supported in Excel sometimes work ({}), and sometimes don’t (<>), so there’s an inconsistency there.

I’ll pass this on to our developers. Thanks for taking the time to write your post!