xlrd

PLEASE NOTE: This library currently has no active maintainers. You are advised to use OpenPyXL instead. If you absolutely have to read .xls files, then xlrd will probably still work for you, but please do not submit issues complaining that this library will not read your corrupted or non-standard file. Just because Excel or some other piece of software opens your file does not mean it is a valid xls file.

For more background to this: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/python-excel/P6TjJgFVjMI/g8d0eWxTBQAJ

Purpose: Provide a library for developers to use to extract data from Microsoft Excel (tm) spreadsheet files. It is not an end-user tool.

Author: John Machin

Licence: BSD-style (see licences.py)

Versions of Python supported: 2.7, 3.4+.

Outside scope: xlrd will safely and reliably ignore any of these if present in the file:

• Charts, Macros, Pictures, any other embedded object. WARNING: currently this includes embedded worksheets.
• VBA modules
• Formulas (results of formula calculations are extracted, of course).
• Comments
• Hyperlinks
• Autofilters, advanced filters, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation
• Handling password-protected (encrypted) files.

Quick start:

import xlrd
book = xlrd.open_workbook("myfile.xls")
print("The number of worksheets is {0}".format(book.nsheets))
print("Worksheet name(s): {0}".format(book.sheet_names()))
sh = book.sheet_by_index(0)
print("{0} {1} {2}".format(sh.name, sh.nrows, sh.ncols))
print("Cell D30 is {0}".format(sh.cell_value(rowx=29, colx=3)))
for rx in range(sh.nrows):
    print(sh.row(rx))

Another quick start: This will show the first, second and last rows of each sheet in each file:

python PYDIR/scripts/runxlrd.py 3rows *blah*.xls

Acknowledgements:

• 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."
• 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
• U+5F20 U+654F: over a decade of inspiration, support, and interesting decoding opportunities.
• Ksenia Marasanova: sample Macintosh and non-Latin1 files, alpha testing
• Backporting to Python 2.1 was partially funded by Journyx - provider of timesheet and project accounting solutions (http://journyx.com/).
• Provision of formatting information in version 0.6.1 was funded by Simplistix Ltd (http://www.simplistix.co.uk/)