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Recording unsaved Excel data with python or automsaving with vba

Using python, I want to continuously record some Excel calculations. The python/excel functions I have used will only read excel data from a saved spreadsheet. Is there a way to read unsaved data?
If not, is there a way to save excel and read the saved data periodically? I tried saving my sheets periodically (with a macro) but this is problematic if I am interacting with the spreadsheet during a save. Instead of saving my spreadsheet, excel saves a copy with a random name. If there is a way to remedy this (maybe some kind of vba error handling) that may solve the problem. Thanks.

Assuming you are using Excel on Windows and not OS X, you can try the win32com.client module, which you can get by installing the Python for Windows package:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
Unfortunately, the available documentation is pretty spotty at best... here's a start:
http://docs.activestate.com/activepython/3.3/pywin32/html/com/win32com/HTML/QuickStartClientCom.html
I should warn you that the COM API isn't very easy to use, so you are really better off sticking with VBA if your workflow requires Excel.
VBA error handling: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/errorhandling.htm

Modifying, recalculating and and extracting results from Excel in Python

I would like to try and make a program which does the following, preferably in Python, but if it needs to be C# or other, that's OK.
Writes data to an excel spreadsheet
Makes Excel recalculate formulas etc. in the modified spreadsheet
Extracts the results back out
I have used things like openpyxl before, but this obviously can't do step 2. Is the a way of recalculating the spreadsheet without opening it in Excel? Any thoughts greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Jack

You need some sort of UI automation with which you can control a UI application such as Excel. Excel probably exposes some COM interface that you should be able to use for what you need. Python has the PyWin32 library which you should install, after which you'll have the win32com module available.
See also:
Excel Python API
Automation Excel from Python
If you don't necessarily have to work with Excel specifically and just need to do spreadsheet using Python, you might want to look at http://manns.github.io/pyspread/.

you could you pandas for reading in the data, using python to recalculate and then write the new files.
For pandas it's something like:
#Import Excel file
xls = pd.ExcelFile('path_to_file' + '/' + 'file.xlsx')
xls.parse('nyc-condominium-dataset', index_col='property_id', na_values=['NA'])
so not difficult. Here the link to pandas.
Have fun!

Python - Reading a spreadsheet

What I need to know is, can I get Python to read a spreadsheet (preferably Microsoft Excel), then parse the information and input it into an equation?
It's for a horse-racing program, where the information for several horses will be in one excel spreadsheet, in different rows or columns. I need to know if I can run a calculation for each of those horses separately and then calculate a score for the given horse.

My suggestion is:
Save the Excel file as a csv comma separated value file, which is a plain text format and much easier to work with.
Use Python's built-in csv module to work with the data in csv format.
You can work with Excel files directly in Python (Excel 2003 format supported via the third party modules xlwt, xlrd) but this is much harder than working with CSV.

OpenPyXL ("A Python library to read/write Excel 2007 xlsx/xlsm files") has a very nice and Pythonic API.

Use xlrd package. It's on PyPI, so you can just easy_install xlrd

You can export the spreadsheet as a .csv and read it in as a text file, then process it. I have a niggling feeling there might even a CSV parsing python library.
AFAIK there isn't a .xls parser, although I might be wrong.
EDIT: I was wrong: http://www.python-excel.org/

Read Excel Cell Comment using Python on Linux?

I am using Python in a Linux (Ubuntu) environment.
How do I go about reading the comment that is stored in cell A5 in spreadsheet MyFile.xls (in case it matters, this file in in Excel 2003 format)?

I was going to say that it's too bad that xlrd doesn't handle comments, but then I stumbled upon this What's the best way to extract Excel cell comments using Perl or Ruby?.
Key passage:
The Python xlrd library will parse
cell comments (if you turn on
xlrd.sheet.OBJ_MSO_DEBUG, you'll see
them), but it doesn't expose them from
the API. You could either parse the
dump or hack on it a bit so you can
get to them programmatically.

You can read Notes by using sheet.cell_note_map easy.

Getting data from an Excel sheet

How do I load data from an Excel sheet into my Django application? I'm using database PosgreSQL as the database.
I want to do this programmatically. A client wants to load two different lists onto the website weekly and they don't want to do it in the admin section, they just want the lists loaded from an Excel sheet. Please help because I'm kind of new here.

Have a look at the xlrd package, which allows you to read Excel files in Python. Once you've read the data you can do whatever you want with it, including saving it to the database.
For a basic usage example, look at http://scienceoss.com/read-excel-files-from-python/

Use django-batchimport http://code.google.com/p/django-batchimport/ It provides a very simple way to upload data in Excel sheets to your Django models. I have used it in a couple of projects. It can be integrated very easily into your existing Django project.
Read the documentation on the project page to know how to use it.
It is built on XLRD.

Have a look at the presentation "Excel & Python" that Chris Withers gave at PyCon US:
"This lightning talk explains that you don't need to use COM or be on Windows to read and write native Excel files."
http://www.simplistix.co.uk/presentations/python_excel_09/excel-lightning.pdf

Programatically or manually? If manualy then just save the excel as a CSV (with csv or txt extension) and import into Postgresql using
copy the_data from '/path/to/csv/MYFILE.txt' DELIMITERS ',' CSV;

As I remember of this.
The best way is to save this sheet as plain text ( CSV or something )
And then load with some custom SQL script.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/populate.html

Or have a look at SQLAlchemy if you're going to write some kind of script to help you with that.(http://www.sqlalchemy.org/)

If you want to use COM to interface excel (i.e. you are running on a Windows machine), see "Migrating Excel data to SQLite" - http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2007/11/migrating-excel-to-sqlite-using-python/

I built django-batchimport on top of xlrd which is AMAZING. The only issues I had were with getting data into Django. Had nothing to do with any limitations of xlrd. It rocks. John's work is incredible.
Note that I've actually done some update work to django-batchimport and just released. Take a look: http://code.google.com/p/django-batchimport/

Just started using XLRD and it looks very easy and simple to use.
Beware that it does not support Excel 2007 yet, so keep in mind to save your excel at 2003 format.