opening an excel file and writing to it in python

Question

How do I open an existing excel file, write to it, and save it as the same filename. None of the previous data should be lost and the new data should be saved.

The pseudocode would be as follows:

open excel file
write data to last row
save excel file

@mitchfish36 any file format of excel works as long as no data gets lost — user1681664, Jun 19 '13 at 15:04
Depends - some libraries silently discard data such as charts/graphs/pivot tables etc/formatting etc... So you'd need to take that into consideration as well... — Jon Clements, Jun 19 '13 at 15:05
See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4226754/editing-excel-sheets-with-python. — alecxe, Jun 19 '13 at 15:07
@JonClements I dont need to insert any of those items. I need to insert just strings — user1681664, Jun 19 '13 at 15:08
@alecxe I read over here that xlutils does not allow you to do want I want. See this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2725852/writing-to-existing-workbook-using-xlwt — user1681664, Jun 19 '13 at 15:09
@user1681664 what I'm saying is - some won't process those items if they already exist - so the output will be without them... — Jon Clements, Jun 19 '13 at 15:09
look at the xlrd module to see if that will do what you need it to. — chrisfs, Jun 19 '13 at 16:10

daiuto · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-19T15:28:48.123

4

If you are willing to use csv format (has obvious limitations) you can use Python's built in CSV library.

Here is a short reader example:

 >>> import csv
 >>> with open('eggs.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
 ...     spamreader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=' ', quotechar='|')
 ...     for row in spamreader:
 ...         print ', '.join(row)
 Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Baked Beans
 Spam, Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam

Writer example:

import csv
with open('eggs.csv', 'a') as csvfile:
    spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=',',
                            quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam'] * 5 + ['Baked Beans'])
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam', 'Lovely Spam', 'Wonderful Spam'])

Keep in mind with csv, you can only modify spreadsheet data, no fancy graphs or anything.

edited Jun 19 '13 at 15:28

answered Jun 19 '13 at 15:09

daiuto

486
2
10
20

This works well, but it overwrites the existing rows. Also, everything gets written in 1 cell – user1681664 Jun 19 '13 at 15:21
@user1681664 I edited the example code to meet the criteria. Also: set the delimiter to ',' if you are viewing as a spreadsheet. – daiuto Jun 19 '13 at 15:29
this is why you are THE man – user1681664 Jun 19 '13 at 15:31

opening an excel file and writing to it in python

1 Answers1