In this series we’ll be using the openpyxl module to work on spreadsheets. In this part we’ll install the module and create a simple workbook. I will use the terms spreadsheet and workbook interchangeably throughout the series.
Spreadsheets are used a lot in all domains of science to manipulate large datasets easily and without prior technical background necessary to get started.
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If you don’t have the openpyxl module on your machine yet, go to the terminal and install it:
pip install openpyxl
With the module installed let’s make sure everything works. Let’s create a spreadsheet. First we need
to import the Workbook class from the openpyxl module:
xxx
from openpyxl import Workbook
Now we can create an object of the Workbook class, which represents the spreadsheet:
workbook = Workbook()
Now let’s assign the active worksheet to a variable. Each spreadsheet may consist of one or more sheets:
sheet = workbook.active
We set the content of the cells using the coordinates of the columns and rows:
sheet['A1'] = 'first cell'
sheet['C2'] = 'It works!'
Finally we have to save the file:
workbook.save(filename = 'first.xlsx')
This creates a spreadsheet file in your current directory. You can now go there and open it by double-clicking on the icon for example.
That’s it. We’ll have a look at all the steps described above in much more detail in later parts of the series.