Can python read the value of a cell in a spreadsheet? [closed]

Question

Can python read the value of a cell in a spreadsheet?

The simplest example would be a script that ran a buffer tool on a given shapefile.

For the distance parameter, instead of just using a number like '1000', the script would point to a value in a cell of a spreadsheet (libre or open office preferred).

If there was then a way to trigger the script from the spreadsheet by way of a button, that would be the next step (then the next step would be to have a map control inside the spreadsheet to see the updated results!)

Just to give some insight into where I'm going with this: I'd like to use a spreadsheet as an analysis 'dashboard' where users could run analysis with different parameters - what would proximity around parks (grocery stores, etc.) be at 1/2 mi vs 1/4 mi...then another sheet in the spreadsheet would have a breakdown of the demographics within that proximity.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Yes, use the xlrd library. See parsing excel documents with python question on Stack Overflow.

Answer 2

On windows and with MS office, you can use the pywin32com module to access the com-api (=same as VBA). This way you can also write to excel. For example:

from win32com import client
excel=client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
excel.Visible=True
book=excel.Workbooks.Open("c:/desktop/test.xlsx", False, True)
sheet=book.Worksheets(1)
sheet.cells(1,1).value = "some text or number"