Adding data validation/macro to existing xls file using python on linux - python

I have a bunch of xls files to which i need to add a data validation (comboboxes) for some cells using python. I am working on linux.
Alternatively, the same could be achieved by adding a macro to a Worksheet that will run upon the file opening and insert data validation.
Most libraries I found were either for Windows or were not able to do that/edit existing file.
Any ideas what is the best (or at least possible) way to achieve that?

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How to use Python to automate the movement of data between two Excel workbooks with specific parameters

Thanks for taking the time to read my question.
I am working on a personal project to learn python scripting for excel, and I want to learn how to move data from one workbook to another.
In this example, I am emulating a company employee ledger that has name, position, address, and more (The organizations is by row so every employee takes up one row). But the project is to have a selected number of people be transferred to a new ledger (another excel file). So I have a list of emails in a .txt file (it could even be another excel file but I thought .txt would be easier), and I would want the script to run through the .txt file, get the emails, and look for any rows that have a matching email address(all emails are in cell 'B'). And if any are found, then copy that entire row to the new excel file.
I tried a lot of ways to make this work, but I could not figure it out. I am really new to python so I am not even sure if this is possible. Would really appreciate some help!
You have essentially two packages that will allow manipulation of Excel files. For reading in data and performing analysis the standard package for use is pandas. You can save the files as .xlsx however you are only really working with base table data and not the file itself (IE, you are extracing data FROM the file, not working WITH the file)
However what you need is really to perform manipulation on Excel files directly which is better done with openpyxl
You can also read files (such as your text file) using with open function that is native to Python and is not a third party import like pandas or openpyxl.
Part of learning to program includes learning how to use documentation.
As such, here is the documentation you require with sufficient examples to learn openpyxl: https://openpyxl.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
And you can learn about pandas here: https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/user_guide/index.html
And you can learn about python with open here: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/inputoutput.html
Hope this helps.
EDIT: It's possible I or another person can give you a specific example using your data / code etc, but you would have to provide it fully. Since you're learning, I suggest using the documentation or youtube.

Python: Read existing Excel file and select a different dropdown value

I want to be able to open an xlsx file in Python and select a different dropdown value in a cell which should trigger an update for the entire spreadsheet based on the new value (just how it currently does so if I manually select a different value). How can I do this in Python and which library can help me?
TL;DR: You can't.
In order to get cascading execution, you need to access the Excel execution engine. Python libraries do not have a copy of this.
If you wish to change additional values in the spreadsheet, you will need to write your Python code to make the changes.
Caveat: There technically is a way to do it using pywin32 if you have a version of Excel installed. In this case Python is simply feeding instructions to Excel, no differently than if you were using VBA. It is significantly more complicated than changing a value using a library such as Openpyxl.

How to upload multiple excel documents into one dataset using python?

I an new to code and I would like to know whether it is possible to upload multiple excel documents into one dataset using python? If so, what is the code for this? All of the code I have seen is used for uploading one single excel document. Moreover, do I have to convert the data into CSV form first or I can use code to convert it into CSV after uploading it?
I am using jupyter notebook in anaconda to run my python code.
Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
By uploading, do you mean reading a file? If so, just create a list or dictionary, open the files and write them 1 by 1 into your list / dictionary. Also, it would be really helpful creating CSV files first. If you want to do it manually you can easily by saving the file as CSV in Excel.

How can I update workbook links when using pd.read_excel()?

The question is pretty simple, actually.
I'm reading an Excel file using Pandas. When I open it using Office's Excel in my Desktop I'm prompted to Enable Content and then Update Links [that is, update values in those cells importing information from cells in other workbooks and xslx files], so it reads other files in some other folders.
While using pd.read_excel('filename') however that option is not available, and I'm afraid it's importing the data previously contained in the spreadsheet without updating it. Is there a workaround?

Embed CSV in Excel and import the data

I wrote a tool that extracts data from a large DB and outputs it to an Excel file along with (conditional) formatting to improve readability. For this I use Python with openpyxl on a Linux machine. It works great, but this package is rather slow for writing Excel.
It seems to be a lot quicker to dump the table as (compressed) csv, import that into Excel and apply formatting there using a macro/vba.
To automate the process I'd like to create an empty Excel file pre-loaded with the required VBA to do the formatting; a template. For every data dump, the data is embedded (compressed using deflate) into the Excel file and loaded into the Workbook upon opening the document (or using a "LOAD" button to circumvent macro related security things).
However, just adding some file into the Excel file raises an error when opened:
We found a problem with some content in 'Werkmap1_test_embed.xlsx'. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes.
Clicking Yes opens the file and shows some tracing information as XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<recoveryLog xmlns="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main">
<logFileName>Repair Result to Werkmap1_OLE_Word0.xml</logFileName>
<summary>Errors were detected in file '/Users/joostk/mnt/cluster/Werkmap1_OLE_Word.xlsx'</summary>
<additionalInfo>
<info>Excel completed file level validation and repair. Some parts of this workbook may have been repaired or discarded.</info>
</additionalInfo>
</recoveryLog>
Is it possible to avoid this? How would I embed a file into the Excel ZIP? Do I need to update some file table (which I could not file easily).
When that's done, I'd like to import the data. Can I access files in the Excel ZIP from VBA? I guess not, and I need to extract the data to some temporary path and load it from there.
I have found these helpful answers elsewhere to load ZIP and plain text:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/35781621/4998990
https://stackoverflow.com/a/11267603/4998990
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts!
so my "Answer" here is that this is caused by using Named Ranges, or an underlying table, or an embedded Query/Connection. When you start manipulating this file you will get the error that you are talking about:
There is no harm to the file if you click "yes" and open. Excel will open this in Repaired Mode which will require you to re-save the file.
The way I've worked around this is to re-read the "repaired" file, in python, and save it as another file or replace it. Essentially just do an extra step of re-reading the data into memory, and write it to a new file. The error will go away. As always, test this method before deploying to production to ensure no records are lost. The way I solve it is with two lines of pandas.
import pandas as pd
repair = pd.read_excel('PATH_TO_REPAIR_FILE')
new_file = repair.to_excel('PATH_TO_WHERE_NEW_FILE_GOES')

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