With the "Read Excel" operator, how can I make it read only the visible cells?

Prentice

Say, my Excel sheet has a couple of hidden cells that I don't want to be in my process, can I make it so that RapidMiner doesn't account for these?

IngoRM

Hi,

There is actually a wizard for the Read Excel operator as well (first button in the parameters of the Read Excel operator).  In the second step, you can select data in the table or define ranges in the box at the top.  However, it looks like you can only define ranges of neighboring cells / columns and not skip columns for example.

As Brian said, you can always deal with this after import (i.e. first read everything and then have a small prep process removing the unwanted cells or columns).

Other than that, I would not know how to achieve this.  I do not think that either the import wizards or any of the operators use the information if a column is hidden or not...

Best,
Ingo

Telcontar120

You can omit certain columns from being read in by deselecting them as part of the import wizard.  And if you have a few header rows at the top they can also be omitted.  But there isn't a way to skip individual cells, you would have to deal with those after import within RapidMiner using some other logic.

Prentice

But when using the "Read Excel" operator, there is no import wizard to omit these. Is there an other operator that is able to detect hidden rows or columns or is this only possible when importing the excel file via the repository?

Prentice

Ah ok, well thanks for that clarification. Also thanks for answering a lot of my questions, you've been really helpful

Telcontar120

No, as Ingo said, you are better off simply importing the whole sheet and then removing the unwanted elements later by using Select Attributes and Filter Examples or other similar approaches.