<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd'> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=us-ascii' /> <title>The xlrd Module -- README</title> </head> <body> <h3>Python package "xlrd"</h3> <p><b>Purpose</b>: Provide a library for developers to use to extract data from Microsoft Excel (tm) spreadsheet files. It is not an end-user tool. </p> <p><b>Author</b>: John Machin, Lingfo Pty Ltd (sjmachin@lexicon.net) </p> <p><b>Licence</b>: BSD-style (see licences.py) </p> <p><b>Version of xlrd</b>: 0.7.1 -- 2009-05-31 </p> <p><b>Versions of Python supported</b>: 2.6-2.7. </p> <p><b>External modules required</b>: </p> <dl><dd> The package itself is pure Python with no dependencies on modules or packages outside the standard Python distribution. </dd> </dl> <p><b>Versions of Excel supported</b>: 2004, 2003, XP, 2000, 97, 95, 5.0, 4.0, 3.0, 2.1, 2.0. Support for Excel 2007 .xlsx files scheduled for version 0.7.1. </p> <p><b>Outside the current scope</b>: xlrd will safely and reliably ignore any of these if present in the file: </p> <ul> <li> Charts, Macros, Pictures, any other embedded object. WARNING: currently this includes embedded worksheets. </li> <li> VBA modules </li> <li> Formulas (results of formula calculations are extracted, of course). </li> <li> Comments </li> <li> Hyperlinks </li> <li> Autofilters, advanced filters, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation </li> </ul> <p><b>Unlikely to be done</b>: </p> <ul><li> Handling password-protected (encrypted) files. </li> </ul> <p><b>Particular emphasis (refer docs for details)</b>: </p> <ul><li> Operability across OS, regions, platforms </li> <li> Handling Excel's date problems, including the Windows / Macintosh four-year differential. </li> <li> Providing access to named constants and named groups of cells (from version 0.6.0) </li> <li> Providing access to "visual" information: font, "number format", background, border, alignment and protection for cells, height/width etc for rows/columns (from version 0.6.1) </li> </ul> <p><b>Quick start</b>: </p> <pre><code> import xlrd book = xlrd.open_workbook("myfile.xls") print "The number of worksheets is", book.nsheets print "Worksheet name(s):", book.sheet_names() sh = book.sheet_by_index(0) print sh.name, sh.nrows, sh.ncols print "Cell D30 is", sh.cell_value(rowx=29, colx=3) for rx in range(sh.nrows): print sh.row(rx) # Refer to docs for more details. # Feedback on API is welcomed. </code></pre><p> </p> <p><b>Another quick start</b>: This will show the first, second and last rows of each sheet in each file: </p> <pre><code> OS-prompt>python PYDIR/scripts/runxlrd.py 3rows *blah*.xls</code></pre> <p><b>Installation</b>: </p> <ul><li> On Windows: use the installer. </li> <li> Any OS: Unzip the .zip file into a suitable directory, chdir to that directory, then do "python setup.py install". </li> <li> If PYDIR is your Python installation directory: the main files are in PYDIR/Lib/site-packages/xlrd the docs are in the doc subdirectory, and there's a sample script: PYDIR/Scripts/runxlrd.py </li> <li> If os.sep != "/": make the appropriate adjustments. </li> </ul> <p><b>Download URLs</b>: </p> <ul><li> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlrd </li> <li> http://www.lexicon.net/sjmachin/xlrd.htm </li> </ul> <p><b>Acknowledgements</b>: </p> <ul><li> This package started life as a translation from C into Python of parts of a utility called "xlreader" developed by David Giffin. "This product includes software developed by David Giffin <david@giffin.org>." </li> <li> OpenOffice.org has truly excellent documentation of the Microsoft Excel file formats and Compound Document file format, authored by Daniel Rentz. See http://sc.openoffice.org </li> <li> U+5F20 U+654F: over a decade of inspiration, support, and interesting decoding opportunities. </li> <li> Ksenia Marasanova: sample Macintosh and non-Latin1 files, alpha testing </li> <li> Backporting to Python 2.1 was partially funded by Journyx - provider of timesheet and project accounting solutions (http://journyx.com/). </li> <li> Provision of formatting information in version 0.6.1 was funded by Simplistix Ltd (http://www.simplistix.co.uk/) </li> <li> << a growing list of names; see HISTORY.html >>: feedback, testing, test files, ... </li></ul> </body> </html>