LAE

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Originally posted by: epetrou

Hello,

I am trying to import a file in Lavastorm Excel node, but i keep getting errors with input length =1 and unrecognized header titles.
The file is from another IT system that is kinda old, (from '93 logistical system) which i am trying to speed it up by using Lavastorm.

I understand that some titles might have some errors (invalid characters-although when i check them they seem fine,weird)
Is there a way to import it by automatically having lavastorm change the title wherever it encounters a problem(like access) ? I have attached a sample to see the headers and test it for yourself.

Any help would be appreciated.

BRE version 5, build 527
Attachments:
sample.zip

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Originally posted by: epetrou

If anyone comes across this kind of problem i found a workaround. Seems like the excel import is pretty strict and doesnt recognize the names of columns and doesnt rename them to be compatible. A fairly simple solution i found was this :
Convert the excel file to csv and then import it in a csv node.This way it automatically changes the incompatible columns names and allows the further process of the file.

Note: This was originally posted by an inactive account. Content was preserved by moving under an admin account.

Originally posted by: Tim Meagher

Hi,

This is a general issue whereby the metadata (field names) within the LAE need to be in the server character set.
If unicode characters within the Excel files column headers cannot be mapped to the LAE metadata then the node will error.
Allowing unicode characters in the metadata - and just generally using unicode as the default character set for metadata & string types is a significant amount of work, but planned in the future.
In the meantime, an enhancement request has been raised to ensure that this data can be brought into the LAE using the Excel File node (using the SubstituteInvalidCharacters option or something similar to allow the node to convert these characters to something that would work as a field name within the metadata).

As a side note, while not a very good solution, if you know the numbers & names of columns in advance, but are dealing with large numbers of Excel files where you aren't able to go and open the file in Excel, convert to CSV and import etc, then another workaround would be to use the WorkbookSpec parameter and specify the names of the fields directly within the WorkbookSpec parameter and specify not to read the header row from the Excel file.

Tim.