Unwanted character in Excel Cell In Python

Question

I am facing an issue with setting a value of Excel Cell. I get data from a table cell in MS-Word Document(dcx) and print it on output console.

Problem is that the data of the cell is just a word, "Hour", with no apparent other leading or trailing printable character like white-spaces. But when I print it using python's print() function, it shows some unexpected character, more like a small "?" in a rectangle.

I don't know where does it come from.

And when I write the same variable that holds the word, "Hour", to an Excel cell it shows a bold dot(.) in the cell.

What can be the problem?

Any help is much appreciated.

I Am Using Python 3.2 And PyWin32 3.2 On Win7. Thanks.

If you iterate over every character in the string and run `ord(char)` on each, what values are returned? — sarnold, May 03 '12 at 00:33
@bossylobster, print(repr(value)) returns: 'Hour\r' Can you please explain what repr() does? I am new to python. — Aashiq Hussain, May 03 '12 at 01:17
"Return a string containing a printable representation of an object. For many types, this function makes an attempt to return a string that would yield an object with the same value when passed to `eval()`..." http://docs.python.org/py3k/library/functions.html#repr — bossylobster, May 03 '12 at 01:23

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered May 20 '12 at 11:54

9

I have the same problem when I get data from a table in word document. What I did to solve this problem is to write a small function that removes all these unnecessary characters:

import re

def removechars(cellvalue):
    text = re.sub(r"[\r\n\t\x07\x0b]", "", cellvalue)
    return text

Then I use :

value = table.Cell(Row = 1, Column = 1).Range.Text
value = removechars(value)

answered May 20 '12 at 11:54

YusuMishi

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Thanks for the above mate. – The Mob Oct 09 '19 at 21:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 03 '12 at 01:24

3

Try using value.rstrip('\r\n') to remove any carriage returns (\r) or newlines (\n) at the end of your string value.

answered May 03 '12 at 01:24

bossylobster

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`\x07` is equivalent to `\a` which is a system beep. I'm not sure how that made it into your string. – bossylobster May 03 '12 at 01:55
Is there any way to strip all those special characters like, \t, \a, \n and others.? I mean without using all of them in the strip function? – Aashiq Hussain May 03 '12 at 02:12
No. The important thing here, and in the future when you are programming, is understanding why they look that way. Why don't you post the code you are using to retrieve the value. – bossylobster May 03 '12 at 03:18

Unwanted character in Excel Cell In Python

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