Python and Microsoft Excel files

[Tim Golden]

ben- <benoit.merouze at epita.fr> wrote in message news:<20040315214043.2814f549.benoit.merouze at epita.fr>...
> I want to import and export Microsoft Excel files.
> Are there libraries for this ?
> 
> If someone have advices to give, I'm interested !

There are three approaches to this:

1) If you have a machine with Excel installed, you can
   use pywin32 to automate the application to extract
   cells or ranges or to save the data as CSV or XML etc.

2) If you are in a position to do so, you could require
   that the originator of the data (might be you) save
   it as CSV or XML or some other format which Python can
   easily read. Obviously, you might lose information
   that way: depends on what the requirement is.

3) You can investigate the work done by others on the
   Excel file format and do something equivalent in
   Python, or wrap an existing solution.

   See: http://chicago.sourceforge.net/devel/docs/excel/

   Don't know how difficult this might be, but
   if you did it you'd not only answer your own question,
   but you'd also be able to respond to future requests
   by saying: look at http://...

HTH
TJG