Feeding New Tab into Existing Excel Sheet

[Rob48]

I have a workflow that I've used to feed the output data into an existing excel file for over a year.  today I ran the workflow and the new tab would not load into the existing excel file.  I should note that the new tab had no data except headers -- the results of the workflow came back "negative" for the data I was searching for.  I've had many instances in the past year of the data coming up empty (headers only, no data) and the tab loads into the existing excel sheet, so I don't understand why it's not working now.  I"ve tested the functionality by creating a new output that contains data (headers + many rows) just to see if that's an issue, and it did work.  So why am I not able to load in a tab with headers only now?  this has been succesful in the past.  Very confusing, so if anyone has any idea's I'd love to hear them.  Thanks!

[MattBSlalom]

Just to confirm, the desired result is to proceed with creating the empty tab (headers only) when the dataset is empty?

I can't speak to why you historically had one behavior that has now seemingly changed.  But, as a suggestion to get the desired result (assuming the above statement is correct), You can add a "dummy" step to actually create the new tab with a mocked up row of data, then proceed with the actual flow that will Overwrite the sheet.  This should result in your empty tab when no data is present.

[Rob48]

Your statement about my desired result is correct.

Do you mean create a dummy tab in the existing excel sheet?  if so, I tried that and still no luck.   

[MattBSlalom]

Here's a sample that results in the empty sheet since the "real" data doesn't match my last filter.  The first path writes the dummy data record to create the sheet/file, then the 2nd flow overwrites the now existing sheet with the empty dataset.

[Rob48]

I would not doubt that this would work (i have not tried it) but what I'd really like to understand is why it stopped working in the first place.  Does anyone have experience with feeding a blank (headers only) tab into an existing excel sheet, and if so can you share the last steps in the workflow?  I'm racking my brain why it would stop working for no apparent reason.