Opening and reading an excel .xlsx file in python

Question

I'm trying to open an excel .xlsx file with python but am unable to find a way to do it, I've tried using pandas but it's wanting to use a library called NumPy I've tried to install numpy but it still can't find numpy.

I've also tried using the xlrd library but I get the following traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\test.py", line 3, in <module>
    book = open_workbook('test.xlsx')
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line 370, in open_workbook
    biff_version = bk.getbof(XL_WORKBOOK_GLOBALS)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line 1323, in getbof
    raise XLRDError('Expected BOF record; found 0x%04x' % opcode)
XLRDError: Expected BOF record; found 0x4b50

Which I assume is because XLRD can't read .xlsx files?

Anyone got any ideas?

EDIT:

import csv
with open('test.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:
    data = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=',')
    for row in data:
        print "------------------"
        print row
        print "------------------"
        for cell in row:
            print cell

Answer 1

Maybe you could export your .xlsx to a .csv file?

Then you could try:

import csv
with open('file.csv','rb') as file:
    contents = csv.reader(file)
    [x for x in contents]

This may be useful: http://docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html#csv.reader

Hope that helps!

EDIT:

If you want to locate a spectific cell, such as F13, you could make a nested list like a matrix and them refer to each element:

import csv
with open('file.csv','rb') as file:
    contents = csv.reader(file)
    matrix = list()
    for row in contents:
        matrix.append(row)

And then access F13 with matrix[5][12].

P.S.: I did not test this. If "row" is a list with each cell as an element, you keep appending all lines to the matrix, so the first index is row number and the second is the column number.

Answer 2

it seems that you are on a Linux Distro. I had the same problem too and this does not happen with "xlwt" library but only with "xlrd". what I did is not the right way to solve this problem but it makes things work for the time being to hopefully have an answer to that question soon ;I have installed "xlrd" on Windows and took the folder and pasted it on Linux in the directory where my python code is and it worked.

Answer 3

Since I know other people will also be reading this -

You can install the following module (it's not there automatically) https://pypi.python.org/pypi/openpyxl

You can read the following to get a nice breakdown on how to use it

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/chapter12/