Open MS Excel Spreadsheet with Python

[John Hunter]

>>>>> "Sybren" == Sybren Stuvel <sybrenUSE at YOURthirdtower.imagination.com> writes:

    >> I think I'm missing something fairly fundamental, but I've
    >> googled all over the place and can't seem to find anything very
    >> introductory about opening and using data from MS Excel using
    >> Python.

Probably are.  Do you use http://groups.google.com to search the
archives of this mailing list?  If you go there, and search for

  excel group:*python*

you'll likely find everything you need to know.  

In a nutshell, using the win32 extensions you can access excel
directly.  On other platforms, you'll probably need to go with an
xl->csv converter, and then either parse the csv yourself or use the
excellent csv module (http://object-craft.com.au/projects/csv); note
that a csv module will be standard with the python library as of
python 2.3.  If you decide to go this route, let me know: I do a lot
of XL->CSV work in python and have a few utility functions that may
come in handy.

JDH