I'm trying to load in Excel files to python and read the formulas into values (as they would appear in Excel). Many of the files have never been opened - rather, have been automatically output from other programs - so there is no previously-rendered version of the formula values. From what I can tell, this excludes openpyxl and pandas read_excel. So I'm trying to read the formulae with xlwings.
I've followed the installation instructions from the documentation and am using Python 2.7 Anaconda on Mac 10.10.5. Trouble is, when following the documentation example, the following error occurs:
wb = xw.Book()
ApplicationNotFoundError: Local application 'Microsoft Excel.app' not found.
I suppose this means I need to buy Excel and install it on my computer?
Alternatively, if there are other python models that can interpret Excel formulae, I'm all ears.
You need to have Excel installed on your machine, because xlwings depends on Excel's COM interface. If you don't, you might be able to use xlrd or one of its successors.