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A wrapper library that provides one API to read, manipulate and write data in different excel formats

Project description

Known constraints

Fonts, colors and charts are not supported.

Feature Highlights

  1. One API to handle multiple data sources:
    • physical file
    • memory file
    • SQLAlchemy table
    • Django Model
    • Python data stuctures: dictionary, records and array
  2. One application programming interface(API) to read and write data in various excel file formats.

Available Plugins

A list of file formats supported by external plugins
Package name Supported file formats Dependencies Python versions
pyexcel-xlsx xlsx openpyxl same as above
pyexcel-xlsxw xlsx(write only) XlsxWriter same as above
pyexcel-ods ods odfpy same as above


[1]zipped csv file
[2]zipped tsv file


You can install it via pip:

$ pip install pyexcel

or clone it and install it:

$ git clone
$ cd pyexcel
$ python install


>>> import pyexcel
>>> content = "1,2,3\n3,4,5"
>>> sheet = pyexcel.Sheet()
>>> sheet.csv = content
>>> sheet.array
[[1, 2, 3], [3, 4, 5]]
>>> with open("myfile.xlsx", "wb") as output:
...     write_count_not_used = output.write(sheet.xlsx)

    >>> os.unlink("myfile.xlsx")

Suppose you want to process the following excel data :

Name Age
Adam 28
Beatrice 29
Ceri 30
Dean 26

Here are the new method to obtain the records on demand:

>>> import pyexcel as pe
>>> for record in records:
Adam is aged at 28
Beatrice is aged at 29
Ceri is aged at 30
Dean is aged at 26


All great work have done by odf, ezodf, xlrd, xlwt, tabulate and other individual developers. This library unites only the data access code.

Development guide

Development steps for code changes

  1. git clone
  2. cd pyexcel

Upgrade your setup tools and pip. They are needed for development and testing only:

  1. pip install –upgrade setuptools “pip==7.1”

Then install relevant development requirements:

  1. pip install -r rnd_requirements.txt # if such a file exists
  2. pip install -r requirements.txt
  3. pip install -r tests/requirements.txt

In order to update test environment, and documentation, additional setps are required:

  1. pip install moban
  2. git clone commons
  3. make your changes in .moban.d directory, then issue command moban

What is rnd_requirements.txt

Usually, it is created when a dependent library is not released. Once the dependecy is installed(will be released), the future version of the dependency in the requirements.txt will be valid.

What is pyexcel-commons

Many information that are shared across pyexcel projects, such as: this developer guide, license info, etc. are stored in pyexcel-commons project.

What is .moban.d

.moban.d stores the specific meta data for the library.

How to test your contribution

Although nose and doctest are both used in code testing, it is adviable that unit tests are put in tests. doctest is incorporated only to make sure the code examples in documentation remain valid across different development releases.

On Linux/Unix systems, please launch your tests like this:

$ make test

On Windows systems, please issue this command:

> test.bat


New BSD License

Change log

0.4.2 - 17.01.2017


  1. Raise exception if the incoming sheet does not have column names. In other words, only sheet with column names could be saved to database. sheet with row names cannot be saved. The alternative is to tranpose the sheet, then name_columns_by_row and then save.
  2. fix iget_records where a non-uniform content should be given, e.g. [[“x”, “y”], [1, 2], [3]], some record would become non-uniform, e.g. key ‘y’ would be missing from the second record.
  3. skip_empty_rows is applicable when saving a python data structure to another data source. For example, if your array contains a row which is consisted of empty string, such as [‘’, ‘’, ‘’ … ‘’], please specify skip_empty_rows=False in order to preserve it. This becomes subtle when you try save a python dictionary where empty rows is not easy to be spotted.
  4. #69: better documentation for save_book_as.

0.4.1 - 23.12.2016


  1. #68: regression save_to_memory() should have return a io stream instance.

0.4.0 - 22.12.2016


  1. Flask-Excel issue 19 allow sheet_name parameter
  2. pyexcel-xls issue 11 case-incenstive for file_type. xls and XLS are treated in the same way


  1. # 66: export_columns is ignored
  2. Update dependency on pyexcel-io v0.3.0

0.3.3 - 07.11.2016


  1. # 63: cannot display empty sheet(hence book with empty sheet) as texttable

0.3.2 - 02.11.2016


  1. # 62: optional module import error become visible.

0.3.0 - 28.10.2016


  1. file type setters for Sheet and Book, and its documentation
  2. iget_records returns a generator for a list of records and should have better memory performance, especially dealing with large csv files.
  3. iget_array returns a generator for a list of two dimensional array and should have better memory performance, especially dealing with large csv files.
  4. Enable pagination support, and custom row renderer via pyexcel-io v0.2.3


  1. Take isave_as out from save_as. Hence two functions are there for save a sheet as
  2. # 60: encode ‘utf-8’ if the console is of ascii encoding.
  3. # 59: custom row renderer
  4. # 56: set cell value does not work
  5. pyexcel.transpose becomes pyexcel.sheets.transpose
  6. iterator functions of pyexcel.Sheet were converted to generator functions
    • pyexcel.Sheet.enumerate()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.reverse()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.vertical()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.rvertical()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.rows()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.rrows()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.columns()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.rcolumns()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.named_rows()
    • pyexcel.Sheet.named_columns()
  7. ~pyexcel.Sheet.save_to_memory and ~pyexcel.Book.save_to_memory return the actual content. No longer they will return a io object hence you cannot call getvalue() on them.


  1. content and out_file as function parameters to the signature functions are no longer supported.
  2. SourceFactory and RendererFactory are removed
  3. The following methods are removed
    • pyexcel.to_array
    • pyexcel.to_dict
    • pyexcel.utils.to_one_dimensional_array
    • pyexcel.dict_to_array
    • pyexcel.from_records
    • pyexcel.to_records
  4. pyexcel.Sheet.filter has been re-implemented and all filters were removed:
    • pyexcel.filters.ColumnIndexFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.ColumnFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.RowFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.EvenColumnFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.OddColumnFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.EvenRowFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.OddRowFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.RowIndexFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.SingleColumnFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.RowValueFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.NamedRowValueFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.ColumnValueFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.NamedColumnValueFilter
    • pyexcel.filters.SingleRowFilter
  5. the following functions have been removed
    • add_formatter
    • remove_formatter
    • clear_formatters
    • freeze_formatters
    • add_filter
    • remove_filter
    • clear_filters
    • freeze_formatters
  6. pyexcel.Sheet.filter has been re-implemented and all filters were removed:
    • pyexcel.formatters.SheetFormatter

0.2.5 - 31.08.2016


  1. # 58: texttable should have been made as compulsory requirement

0.2.4 - 14.07.2016


  1. For python 2, writing to sys.stdout by pyexcel-cli raise IOError.

0.2.3 - 11.07.2016


  1. For python 3, do not seek 0 when saving to memory if sys.stdout is passed on. Hence, adding support for sys.stdin and sys.stdout.

0.2.2 - 01.06.2016


  1. Explicit imports, no longer needed
  2. Depends on latest setuptools 18.0.1
  3. NotImplementedError will be raised if parameters to core functions are not supported, e.g. get_sheet(cannot_find_me_option=”will be thrown out as NotImplementedError”)

0.2.1 - 23.04.2016


  1. add pyexcel-text file types as attributes of pyexcel.Sheet and pyexcel.Book, related to issue 31
  2. auto import pyexcel-text if it is pip installed


  1. code refactoring done for easy addition of sources.
  2. bug fix issue 29, Even if the format is a string it is displayed as a float
  3. pyexcel-text is no longer a plugin to pyexcel-io but to pyexcel.sources, see pyexcel-text issue #22


  1. pyexcel.presentation is removed. No longer the internal decorate @outsource is used. related to issue 31

0.2.0 - 17.01.2016


  1. adopt pyexcel-io yield key word to return generator as content
  2. pyexcel.save_as and pyexcel.save_book_as get performance improvements

Project details

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