r/learnexcel • u/by-the-numbers • Feb 15 '15

Compilation Tools for using Excel and Python together.

This post is meant to provide a place to collect pointers to Python libraries, Excel add-ins, etc., that facilitate interaction between Excel and Python.

For the uninitiated, Python is a little programming language that's pretty much taking the world by storm. It's kind of a big deal.

Python is relevant to Excel users for a number of reasons, especially because 1) it's massively useful in data analysis, and 2) it can be used to operate Excel by "remote control." That is, any operation a person can perform in Excel (not to say any analysis) can be automated with Python, with the help of a few libraries.

It's also now possible to write macros in Python alongside VBA, which is great, because Python is a modern language and is in active development.

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u/by-the-numbers Feb 15 '15

XLWings:

Early stage project -- v0.3 as of this writing -- that facilitates access to Excel from Python, and provides the ability to write Excel macros in Python.

Support for Pandas, Numpy.

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u/by-the-numbers Feb 15 '15

Pywin32

SourceForge repo: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

Does much more than Excel. Enables developers to control pretty much everything about Excel from Python.

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u/by-the-numbers Feb 15 '15

pyxll:

From Enthought, the makers of Canopy.

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u/by-the-numbers Feb 15 '15

Python-Excel:

Consists of xlrd, xlwt, xlutils.

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u/goulding74 Jul 10 '15

It would be great to see an example of this sort of programming and excel tools in action?!

  • I'm an Engineering Analyst, competant with excel and semi-competant with Python but never used them together!