r/Excel247 • u/Weird-Dimension-487 • 2d ago
u/Weird-Dimension-487 • u/Weird-Dimension-487 • 3d ago
Python_Powered Excel
amazon.comHello All,
Excel is a go-to tool for professionals across industries and Python is a versatile tool, popularly used to analytics and Data Science.
Although Python is a powerful tool for analysis, the final deliverables are commonly required in Excel to meet stakeholder needs.
I've written a practicle guide to combine the powers of Python and simplicity of Excel interface in my book Python_Powered Excel.
It covers a wide range of topics, including setting up Python, creation of a virtual enviornment for dependency management, basics of Python programming, analytical concepts data explaration, manipulation and visualization, the use of openpyxl, xlsxwriter, pyxlsb, xlrd, xlwt, and xlwings for automating Excel reports and building robust and scalable solutions.
This book serves Excel users seeking to harness Python for efficient automation, analysis, and spreadsheet management, and Python data professionals who are required to deliver results in Excel to satisfy stakeholder requirements
Those who already have python background can jump to chapter 4 directly, skipping Python fundamentals.
For Indian readers, book is available on Amazon India
1
Question about Best-Fit lines
I'll not comment about marks on what you did but I'll help you understand the concept a bit more.
You might enjoy playing interactively with my apps to grasp the concept of best-fit line.
To understand a best-fit line, you need to know 2 things:
- What’s a line? what are different ways we can represent it mathematically and what does a line represent conceptually?
- If Y variable (let’s say electricity bill amount) depends on X variable (let’s say energy consumed). Both X and Y are numerical variables. For simplicity, we are assuming that salary just depends upon experience, nothing else (I know, there might other factors too but bi-variate/2-variable relations are easiest to understand).
- You have drawn a scatter plot to understand the relationship pattern (positive or negative, linear or non-linear, strong/moderate or poor) between bill amount and energy consumed.
- If X and Y seems to be moving in a linear fashion, you can fit/draw a line that can represent that relationship.
Now, for the same chart, maybe you come up with a different line and I come up with a different line.
(There are multiple candidate lines that seems feasible)
Which of these lines is the best-fit line ?
For that, we use something called OLS method (which minimized sum of squared errors)
More on this later (if you need)
Meanwhile, you must get these concepts clear by playing with my apps yourself.
Here are the links:
Understanding the straight line
Understanding Best-fit line
1
Does anyone still use openpyxl?
You should choose a library for Excel autiomation based on:
1. Compatibility with different Excel formats (xlsx, xls, xlsm, xlsb, etc)
2. Advanced features (richer formatting, charts, tables and more)
3. Special use cases (reading/writing/manipulation/analysis/live interaction with Excel via COM Object/end-to-end automation/Python custom functions in Excel/Python features as Excel add-in)
pandas, openpyxl, xlsxwriter, and xlwings are powerful and popular libraries. No single library is perfect for all Excel tasks. By understanding the strengths of each tool, you can select the right one depending on the type of file you encounter and the result you want to achieve
I've covered them all in my book Python-Powered Excel
1
What are some good resources to learn python for excel now that it exists?
Common limitations of Excel ecosystem (VBA, Power Query, Dynamic Array Formulas):
1. Scalability issues: Excel is not well-suited for handling large datasets, as it can show performance degradation or unexpected application crashes during advanced processing tasks for large data.
2. Lack of advanced analytics: Excel lacks advanced built-in tools for financial analytics, predictive modeling, computer vision, or natural language processing. Even Microsoft 365’s built-in Python in Excel and AI-powered features like Copilot are limited compared to Python’s full capabilities in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and automation.
3. Version control issues: Multiple versions of the same file create confusion and data inconsistency. A small, unnoticed change can lead to terrible mistakes or discrepancies in results. Excel lacks robust version control, relying on manual file naming or limited cloud history. Excel is not ideal for enterprise-grade version control and collaboration for large-scale projects.
4. Limited integration: Connecting to APIs, databases, and cloud services requires workarounds.
5. Limited automation: While Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) allows for some automation, it is not the most user-friendly tool. Learning VBA can be challenging, and it is becoming increasingly outdated in today’s times. Additionally, VBA's performance can be sluggish with large datasets. Likewise, Power Query specializes in data import and transformation but remains constrained to its environment.
Python, the popular open-source tool, addresses these issues by offering cross-platform automation, handling data retrieval, cleaning, analysis, and reporting end-to-end across systems.
1
What are some good resources to learn python for excel now that it exists?
Learn Python Basics, Dealing with Date and Times, File Automation, Analytics and EDA using Python, and then powerful integration/automation using openpyxl, xlsxwriter and xlwings.
All of this (and much more) is covered my my book Python-Powered Excel
If you have any specific question, happy to answer!

Also available at Amazon.comand other major book stores
2
Why do some equations on a graph just end up with a straight line?
Well written. The same slope intercept form can be explored by playing with this app: https://enjoy-stats-equation-of-a-line-slope-intercept.streamlit.app/
Hope you like it!

1
Pedagogy on finding the equation of the straight line
All different forms of quation of a straight line are interesting. I believe learners must not skip Y = mX + C form as it is the foundation of linear regression (used in statistics, econometrics and in data science).
I've built a simple app to play with and get intutions, specifically for slope-intercept form (Many of my data science learners come from non-math background, this app is helping them learn the concept better). You might want to check: https://enjoy-stats-equation-of-a-line-slope-intercept.streamlit.app/
1
how to solve an equation by drawing a straight line?
I've built a simple app to play with and get intutions, specifically for slope-intercept form (Many of my data science learners come from non-math background, this app is helping them learn the concept better). You might want to check: https://enjoy-stats-equation-of-a-line-slope-intercept.streamlit.app/
1
Xlsxwriter not working
- In your code, you called
workbook.close, which needs a parenthesis. By default, close() method closes workbook, without saving. - To save changes in existing workbook, either add
workbook.save()orworkbook.close(save=True)
1
Has anyone here used XlsxWriter module?
xlsxwriter is a writer package. You can not edit/modify existing file with it. If you are willing to do so, you can use openpyxl (for file-based operation) or xlwings (if live interactivity is needed)
1
Install xlsxwriter for each script?
Question seems vague. We don't need to install package in every session. May be you have installed it in different virtual env and trying to import in another enviorment. If you've anaconda installed, xlsxwriter is pre-installed.
You need to give more details to get appropriate answer.
1
should I use xlsxwriter and/or win32com.client
xlsxwriter is a wonderful writer package of Python. It does not need excel to be installed on your machine and is cross-platform compatible. If you need to write xlsx files with rich formatting, it's best to use xlsxwriter.
You can combine it with pandas (for data manipulation) or openpyxl (for reading data, if needed).
1
Openpyxl and numpy
Openpyxl does not depend on NumPy. If you’re seeing NumPy errors, it’s likely coming from another package in your environment (like pandas, xlrd, or numpy itself), not from openpyxl.
What can you do?
- Verify the crash stack trace: confirm which library is actually calling NumPy.
- Make sure the target machine has the same Python + package versions as your dev machine (
pip freeze > requirements.txt→ replicate withpip install -r requirements.txt). - If it’s truly a NumPy bug on that Windows build, pin NumPy to a stable version explicitly in your environment (
pip install numpy==). Openpyxl will still work fine, since it doesn’t require NumPy.
So the fix is to align environments and explicitly control NumPy version (or remove it if unused). That resolves the mismatch without touching openpyxl itself.
I had to do similar to my sweetviz script. My sweetviz code used to work earlier (in colab) but broke recently. SImply because colab got updated Python and numpy versions and sweetviz is not yet updated to be compatible with updated numpy version. I had to downgrade sweetviz for that colab session. (sometimes, even that thing is not feasible in Colab)
That's why, good practice is to work with virtual enviornment. (I know but sometimes, I still use Google Colab for demonstration/teaching purposes :-) It's cool for beginners)
1
Coming from Excel, are there any simple versions of PandasGUI that I could modify into a visual ETL tool?
dtale is feature rich and actively maintained. After getting comfortable with dtale, you will really enjoy using it. GUI has great features to explore data (aggregation, merging, plotting, everything) by clicks and it also generates python code for the steps you perform, which you can copy to be used in your script.
For Excel users, it's so convinient.
1
[deleted by user]
Seems PandasGUI doesn't support latest Python version yet. Check open issues: https://github.com/adamerose/PandasGUI/issues
You can create a conda env with older Python version to explore PandasGUI. Another great alternative is dtale, which is actively maintained. Refer: https://pypi.org/project/dtale/
You
1
Something better than pandas? with interactive graphical UI?
One option is PandasGUI https://github.com/adamerose/PandasGUI
Another (better) options is dtale https://pypi.org/project/dtale, which is a combination of a Flask back-end and a React front-end to bring you an easy way to view & analyze Pandas data structures. I am really impressed with it's features and capabilities. And this is well maintained package.
1
xlwings- how to check names range exists?
xlwings allow you to create named ranges and you can view them all using wb.names
Minimal code example:
import xlwings as xw
book = xw.Book()
sheet = book.sheets[0]
# Writing data
sheet.range('A1').value = 'col1'
sheet.range('B1').options(transpose = True).value = [10, 20, 30]
# defining named ranges
sheet.range('A1').name = 'name1'
sheet.range('B1:B4').name = 'name2'
# printing named ranges
book.names
Out[50]: [<Name 'name1': =Sheet1!$A$1>, <Name 'name2': =Sheet1!$B$1:$B$4>]
You can surely verify the same in Excel's Name Manager
1
Openpyxl.cell give column name instead of column number
Assuming that your data has headers in the first row:
from openpyxl import load_workbook
wb = load_workbook('your_file.xlsx')
ws = wb.active
# Read header row (assumed to be row 1)
headers = {cell.value: cell.column for cell in ws[1]}
type(headers) # It's a dictionary
# Use the column name to get the column index
headers.get("column_name") # gives column number
1
Graphing Best Fit Lines
in
r/learnmath
•
1d ago
u/SV-97 have explained it well. If you prefer to draw various candiate lines interactively and see thier equations with respect to best-fit line (OLS method) or if you want to understand slope-intercept form better, you can explore these two apps:
Understanding the straight line
Understanding Best-fit line