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New Participant
January 21, 2026
Question

readexcelsheetpaging plug returns empty data when row 1 is blank

  • January 21, 2026
  • 5 replies
  • 11 views

Hi everyone,

To avoid ambiguity: my input is an excel document. The relevant sheet is the first sheet (index 0). In that sheet, the first row is completely empty, and the header starts on row 2 (e.g., A2, B2, …).

When I try to read the data with readExcelSheetPaging(), Appian seems to interpret the sheet as empty and I get:

List of Variant - 0 items

Example Code:

a!localVariables(
local!excelData: readexcelsheetpaging(
excelDocument: ri!excelInputFile,
sheetNumber: 0,
pagingInfo: a!pagingInfo(
startIndex: 2,
batchSize: 10
),
stopReadingAtFirstBlankRow: 0
),
local!excelData.data
)

What I have tried so far:

  • Using the remove() function to remove the first row does not help. The empty row is removed but Appian still returns 0 row, interpretating the sheet as empty.
  • If I modify the respective excel Input file sheet and put any dummy value in "A1", then the exact expression works as expected and returns data from row 2 onwards. In that case, removing/skipping the header row also works as expected.

My suspicion: 

It seems like the plug in readExcelSheetPaging() cannot handle a sheet where the first row is completely blank, even if startIndex is set to 2 and stopReadingAtFirstBlankRow is disabled.

Has anyone encountered this behavior? Is this a known limitation? Did I miss anything?

I would highly appreciate your feedback.

5 replies

New Participant
January 21, 2026

Try inputting all the parameters values in order like you aren't using keyword syntax. When I used this in the past stopReadingAtFirstBlankRow just did not work unless all the parameters were provided. Found the solution in this thread Appian Community.

New Participant
January 22, 2026

Thank you, I have already checked that thread, unfortunately without success...

New Participant
January 22, 2026

So just for clarity you tried this including the default values for the other optional arguments: numberOfColumns argument and the password argument as well and it did not work?

a!localVariables(
local!excelData: readexcelsheetpaging(
excelDocument: ri!excelInputFile,
sheetNumber: 0,
pagingInfo: a!pagingInfo(
startIndex: 2,
batchSize: 10
),
numberOfColumns:0,
password:"",
stopReadingAtFirstBlankRow: 0
),
local!excelData.data
)

shubhama926776
Brainy
January 22, 2026

Fully blank row 1 causes it to detect no data, bypassing startIndex and stopReadingAtFirstBlankRow=0

शुभम्
New Participant
January 22, 2026

Thank you for your reply. Do you have an idea for a work arround within Appian? Can I add 1 dummy values in the first row?

I have already tried building a process model using the Export Data Store Entity to Excel service. Using this service I was able to add dummy values at starting cell A1 to the Excel, however, all values from A2 onwards were replaced...