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pythonexcel
Jim Jeffries
Jim Jeffries

Reputation: 10081

Excel Python API

Does anyone know of a way of accessing MS Excel from Python? Specifically I am looking to create new sheets and fill them with data, including formulae.

Preferably I would like to do this on Linux if possible, but can do it from in a VM if there is no other way.

Upvotes: 22

Views: 49421

Answers (6)

Manideep Karthik
Manideep Karthik

Reputation: 111

Its actually very simple. You can actually run anything from any program. Just see a way to reach command prompt from that program. In case of Excel, create a user defined function by pressing Alt+F11 and paste the following code.

Function call_cmd()
Shell "CMD /C Notepad", vbNormalFocus
End Function

Now press ctrl+s and go back to Excel, select a cell and run the function =call_cmd(). Here I ran Notepad. In the same way, you can see where python.exe is installed and run it. If you want to pass any inputs to python, then save the cells as file in local directory as csv file and read them in python using os.system().

Upvotes: 0

Alex
Alex

Reputation: 2074

I wrote python class that allows working with Excel via COM interface in Windows http://sourceforge.net/projects/excelcomforpython/

The class uses win32com to interact with Excel. You can use class directly or use it as example. A lot of options implemented like array formulas, conditional formatting, charts etc.

Upvotes: 4

Joop
Joop

Reputation: 8108

Long time after the original question, but last answer pushed it top of feed again. Others might benefit from my experience using python and excel.

I am using excel and python quite bit. Instead of using the xlrd, xlwt modules directly, I normally use pandas. I think pandas uses these modules as imports, but i find it much easier using the pandas provided framework to create and read the spreadsheets. Pandas's Dataframe structure is very "spreadsheet-like" and makes life a lot easier in my opinion.

The other option that I use (not in direct answer to your problem) is DataNitro. It allows you to use python directly within excel. Different use case, but you would use it where you would normally have to write VBA code in Excel.

Upvotes: 6

Chals
Chals

Reputation: 141

there is Python library to read/write Excel 2007 xlsx/xlsm files http://pythonhosted.org/openpyxl/

Upvotes: 4

Vladimir Sinenko
Vladimir Sinenko

Reputation: 4667

It's surely possible through the Excel object model via COM: just use win32com modules for Python. Can't remember more but I once controlled the Media Player through COM from Python. It was piece of cake.

Upvotes: 3

Thomas K
Thomas K

Reputation: 40390

xlwt and xlrd can read and write Excel files, without using Excel itself:

http://www.python-excel.org/

Upvotes: 29

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