Excel Reader Sheet Name Variable

Seems to be a bunch of these topics on the forum but the solutions don’t work for me.

I am using a flow variable to specify the sheet/tab name to read on an XLSX file, but it doesn’t have any effect.

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I have selected the radio button to “Select sheet with name”:

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…and the flow variable is set here:

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But I cannot get the correct name to populate. Thoughts?

@AndrewDevlin it might be this problem where there already is a ticket (AP-18133). You could try to force excel to use the name by setting it with a flow variable

But I cannot get the correct name to populate. Thoughts?

What does this mean exactly? What’s the actual error that results when you execute the Excel Reader node?

To me, this sounds as if you’d like to see the Sheet Selection section of the Settings tab of the Excel Reader configuration window to update in real time to reflect the value of the flow variable. This isn’t going to happen.

I was expecting to see the file content tab showing the data in the tab name that I am specifying in the variable, so that I can configure the reader for the columns and formatting I need.

I have figured it out now. I have specified manually the tab I need for Excel Reader configuration purposes, and then when running the loop, the tab name updates as expected.

I guess I was expecting something more intuitive here, like an indication in the configuration UI that the sheet name is being controlled by a variable like in most other nodes.

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Hi @AndrewDevlin , most of the settings work this way. Think of the flow variables as a way to override a setting. This means that you have to first set the setting manually (with a dummy value), which you can then override with the flow variable. Just setting the flow variable without manually adding the setting would not work, as it would not have anything to override.

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