Driving Excel from Python

[Alex Martelli]

Dale Strickland-Clark <dale at out-think.NOSPAMco.uk> wrote in message
news:8j7oqn$e9q$1 at supernews.com...
> (Sorry if this appears more than once. I'm getting errors from news
server).
>
> I'm driving Excel from Python and most of it's working fine except for:
>
> >>> xlsh.UsedRange.Address(ReferenceStyle=1)
> TypeError: call of non-function (type string)
>
> xlsh is an Excel Sheet object and I'm trying to get the used range in RxCx
> format. However, when I try and specify ANY arguments to the Address
> property, I get this error message. I've tried both positional and keyword
> arguments.
>
> I have the Python Win32 book but this this subject is not quite covered in
> sufficient depth.
>
> Any help appreciated.

For reasons that escape me, .Address doesn't seem to be seen as an
indexed-property; however, a .GetAddress is also made available that
does seem to behave as an indexed-property like .Address should.  I
sort of suspect that this is to let people use .Address, without any
parenthesis, in the common case where they want to let all arguments
default.  However, I can't find any docs about this guess of mine.

Anyway, you CAN now call

xlsh.UsedRange.GetAddress(ReferenceStyle=1)

and get the same '$A$1' kind of string that you'd get with

xlsh.UsedRange.Address

since, after all, xlA1, aka 1 (win32com.client.constants.xlA1, too),
IS the default value for ReferenceStyle.

A further puzzlement, however, is that

xlsh.UsedRange.GetAddress(ReferenceStyle=-4150)

ALSO appears to return the same '$A$1' string too!  BTW, that funny
-4150 is xlR1C1, aka win32com.client.constants.xlR1C1, who knows
why.  But anyway, while this does allow accessing the Address indexed
properties with 'indices' (arguments), this doesn't appear to be
doing much good at all.  Maybe somebody else understands what's
going on...?

It does work fine from the Immediate windows in VBA inside Excel:
    print Sheet1.UsedRange.Address
$A$1
    print Sheet1.UsedRange.Address(ReferenceStyle=xlR1C1)
$A1

but from Python I always get '$A$1'.  Weird...


Alex