Comments on: Read Excel files from Python

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:44:10 +0000

Is there a way to read cells in their display format as opposed to their native formats? For example, get the cell content as “$66,777.31″ if the value 66777.31 is formatted as currency.

By: ryan

ryan — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:44:16 +0000

John, thanks for xlrd, it’s fantastic.

I made the edits you suggested.

Just checking: is it correct that there is no [supported] way to add content to an existing Excel sheet using xlrd?

-ryan

By: John Machin

John Machin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 06:08:55 +0000

Hi, Ryan, I’m the author/maintainer of xlrd. Thanks for the advertisement!

One point though, relating to this line in your posting:

sh.put_cell(row, col, ctype, value, xf)

Sheet.put_cell is only for internal use building the sheet contents, it is intentionally not documented and is definitely *not* supported.

Bonus extra point:
cell_C4 = sh.cell(2,3).value
should be
cell_C4 = sh.cell(3, 2).value
or (better)
cell_C4 = sh.cell(rowx=3, colx=2).value

Cheers,
John

By: ryan

ryan — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:19:47 +0000

@Attila Bleier:
Nice catch, thanks. It’s fixed now.

By: Attila Bleier

Attila Bleier — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:56:45 +0000

Please note that the example above has a typo. The 2nd line should be: wb=xlrd.open_workbook(’myworkbook.xls’), because of the namespace.

excellent post, thanks.

By: Techy News » scienceoss.com " Blog Archive " Read Excel files from Python

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:47:07 +0000

[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]

By: ryan

ryan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:03:04 +0000

@Josef Assad:
I don’t think it can write Excel format files, you have to have an existing Excel file.

You could try PyExcelerator though (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyexcelerator), which does write to Excel format. I’ll give it a shot myself and write a post on using it.

By: Josef Assad

Josef Assad — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:56:27 +0000

Does it also write excel format files?

By: Read Excel files with Python (no win32com) : [ mkhairul.com ]

Read Excel files with Python (no win32com) : [ mkhairul.com ] — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:33:39 +0000

[...] Read excel files from python using a package called xlrd that can read excel files from anywhere, even LINUX! No more importing win32com as displayed in recipes. Maybe with this I can solve the problem involving the excel sheet and vba thing that I’m having here at work. Not a priority, just someone needs help with it and seems like a challenge. I’m not very familiar with converting unicode back and forth. [...]

By: Corey Goldberg

Corey Goldberg — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:30:33 +0000

Thanks for this post. I normally end up saving Excel files as CSV and parsing raw data like that. This is a cool way to work with Excel files directly.

Great blog… I am enjoying going through your Python posts.

-Corey