Use the excellent xlrd package, which works on any platform. That means you can read Excel files from Python in Linux! Example usage:
Open the workbook
import xlrd
wb = xlrd.open_workbook('myworkbook.xls')
Check the sheet names
wb.sheet_names()
Get the first sheet either by index or by name
sh = wb.sheet_by_index(0) sh = wb.sheet_by_name(u'Sheet1')
Iterate through rows, returning each as a list that you can index:
for rownum in range(sh.nrows):
print sh.row_values(rownum)
If you just want the first column:
first_column = sh.col_values(0)
Index individual cells:
cell_A1 = sh.cell(0,0).value cell_C4 = sh.cell(rowx=3,colx=2).value
(Note Python indices start at zero but Excel starts at one)
Turns out the put_cell() method isn’t supported, so ignore the following section (Thanks for the heads up, John!)
Put something in the cell:
row = 0 col = 0 ctype = 1 # see below value = 'asdf' xf = 0 # extended formatting (use 0 to use default) sh.put_cell(row, col, ctype, value, xf) sh.cell(0,0) # text:u'asdf' sh.cell(0,0).value # 'asdf'
Possible ctypes: 0 = empty, 1 = string, 2 = number, 3 = date, 4 = boolean, 5 = error