diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index b5b6eaa5..2b24c91c 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ values. Warning issued now.
 available for s_attribute defined by `mw`.
 * `decode()` to `AnnotatedPlainTextDocument` failed if a document contains only
 one token. Fixed #285.
+* `decode()` failed if nested s-attribute does not occur. Fixed #284.
 
 # polmineR v0.8.9
 
diff --git a/R/decode.R b/R/decode.R
index e976f9c8..4daab64c 100644
--- a/R/decode.R
+++ b/R/decode.R
@@ -470,8 +470,16 @@ setMethod("decode", "slice", function(.Object, to = c("data.table", "Annotation"
           registry = .Object@registry_dir,
           region_matrix = .Object@cpos
         )
-        strucs <- RcppCWB::ranges_to_cpos(struc_matrix)
-        if (length(strucs) == 0L) next
+        strucs <- suppressWarnings(RcppCWB::ranges_to_cpos(struc_matrix))
+        if (length(strucs) == 0L){
+          if (decode){
+            y[, (s_attributes[i]) := rep(NA_character_, times = nrow(y))]
+          } else {
+            y[, (s_attributes[i]) := rep(NA_integer_, times = nrow(y))]
+          }
+          
+          next
+        }
         
         regions <- RcppCWB::get_region_matrix(
           corpus = .Object@corpus,