How to import an old Excel file with extension.xls? - python

I have a file from SAS that is exported as an older Excel .xls file. I would like to import this file into python 3.5.
when I do:
import pandas as pd
Filewant = pd.read_excel("Filepath\\\Filename.xls")
I get a bunch of error messages culminating in
XLRDError: Unsupported format, or corrupt file: Expected BOF record; found b'<html xm'
if I open up the file and manually save it in a current .xlsx file and us the same command line using:
Filewant =pd.read_excel("Filepath\\Filename\.xlsx")
then the file is imported into Python properly. However, I want the process to be more automated so I don't to have to manually save the file to .xlsx format to make it work.

SAS tech support told me that this won't work and that I'll need to convert the .xls SAS output into a .xlsx file:
Unfortunately, the MSOffice2K destination creates an HTML file even though it uses the .XLS extension here which allows the file to be opened with excel.
You can use VBScript to convert the file to .XLSX, however, there is no way to do this using the MSoffice2K destination.

The error message tells you the problem. found b'<html xm' Your file is an HTML file and not an XLS file. This was commonly done with "old" SAS since it did not support writing XLS files, but Excel did support reading HTML files.

Related

Python: Unsupported format, or corrupt file

I am trying to make a python program that downloads and XLS file from a website, in this case website is: https://www.blackrock.com/uk/individual/products/291392/, and loads it as a dataframe in pandas, with the correct data structure.
The issue is that when I try to load it via pandas, it gives me an error: XLRDError: Unsupported format, or corrupt file: Expected BOF record; found b'\xef\xbb\xbf\xef\xbb\xbf<?'
I am not quite sure what is causing this error, but presumable something with the file. I can open the file in Excel, even though I get a warning that the file and the file extension do not match, and that the file might be dangerous etc. If I click yes to opening it anyway, it opens up with data displayed correctly. If I use Excel to save the file as .xlsx i can open it in pandas, but I would rather a solution that didn't require manually opening Excel and saving the file.
I have tried renaming the file extension to xlsx, but this does not work, as it won't allow me to open the file with that extension.
I have tried many different extension, but non of them bite - unfortunately.
I am at a loss.
I hope, you can help.
EDIT: The code I use is:
download_path = 'https://www.blackrock.com/uk/individual/products/291392/fund/1527484370694.ajax?fileType=xls&fileName=iShares-MSCI-World-SRI-UCITS-ETF-USD-Dist_fund&dataType=fund'
testing = pd.read_excel(download_path, engine='xlrd', sheet_name = 'Holdings', skiprows = 3)
The actual problem is that the file format is SpreadSheetML which has only been used briefly between 2003 and 2006. It has been overtaken by the XLSX format. Since, it has been around for a short time and while ago, most packages do not support for load/save operations. More about the format can be found here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/office-xp/aa140066(v=office.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN
For this reason, the Pandas or any other XML parser (e.g Etree) will not be able to load properly. The regular MS Office software would still load it correctly. As far as I know, you can deal with SpreadSheetML files using aspose-cells package: https://products.aspose.com/cells/python-java/
For your case:
# Import packages
import jpype
import asposecells
jpype.startJVM()
from asposecells.api import Workbook, FileFormatType
from asposecells.api import HtmlSaveOptions
# Read Workbook
workbook = Workbook('iShares-MSCI-World-SRI-UCITS-ETF-USD-Dist_fund.xls')
worksheet = workbook.getWorksheets().get(0)
# Accessing a cell using its name
cells = worksheet.getCells()
cell = cells.get("A1")
# Print Message
print("Cell Value: " + str(cell.getValue())) # Prints Cell Value: 17-Nov-2021
# To save SpreadSheetML in different format (HTML)
saveOptions = HtmlSaveOptions()
saveOptions.setDisableDownlevelRevealedComments(True)
workbook.save("iShares-MSCI-World-SRI-UCITS-ETF-USD-Dist_fund.html", saveOptions)
As mentioned by Slybot, this is not a real xls file.
If you inspect the contents in a plain text editor, or a hex editor, the header starts:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ss:Workbook xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet">
which confirms this is an xml document, and not an Office 2007 zipped xlsx office document.
Your next steps depend on whether you have Excel installed on the machine that will be running this code or not, and if not, what other libraries you have access to and are willing to pay for - Slybot has mentioned aspose for example.
The easiest solution - Excel
If you are running this on a Windows machine with Excel installed, you have the free and capable option of automating the operation of opening Excel and saving as xlsx. This is by using Win32com module, described in this answer:
Attempting to Parse an XLS (XML) File Using Python
Alternatively, save your Excel styled XML as xlsx with Workbook.SaveAs method using win32com (only for Windows users) and read in with pandas.read_excel skipping appropriate rows.
The XML solution
You could read in the raw XML and digest it. The relevant nodes are:
<ss:Workbook>
<ss:Worksheet ss:Name="Holdings">
<ss:Table>
<ss:Row>
<ss:Cell ss:StyleID="Left">
<ss:Data ss:Type="String">iShares MSCI World SRI UCITS ETF</ss:Data>
The Third-party library solution
I am not familiar with any libraries which provide this functionality, and can't advise on this option.

Load xls files with pandas is failed

I am trying to load an xls file with pandas using:
pd.read_excel(fi_name, sheet_name=None, engine=None)
But i get this error:
"XLRDError: Workbook is encrypted"
But file is not encrypted, i can open it with excel, and read file's text with tika package.
Is someone know how can i solve it ?
Besides, is anyone know a python package for reading all excel files format,
Even if pandas is failed ?
Thanks
I guess ,I found something for your problem:
import msoffcrypto
file = msoffcrypto.OfficeFile (open ('encrypted.xls', 'rb')) # read the original file
file.load_key (password = 'VelvetSweatshop') # Fill in the password, if it can be opened directly, the default password is 'VelvetSweatshop'
file.decrypt (open ('decrypted.xls', 'wb')) # Save it as a new file after decryption
After that, you can use xlrd to open and operate the decrypted file normally.
and you can install the package with
pip install msoffcrypto
and you can see the full documentation here
There are 2 possible reasons for this:
The file that you are getting is not in the same file format as the file extension says.
Either the whole workbook or a sheet of it is password protected and hence the data being read from it is encrypted to protect the data.

Python: How to write data to an Excel file using pd.ExcelWriter?

The question:
I'm trying to write data to an Excel file using Python, specifically using the ExcelWriter function provided py Pandas as described here in the docs. I think I've onto something here, but I'm only able to achieve one of two outcomes:
1. If the Excel file is open, access permission is denied.
2. If the Excel file is closed, the code seems to be running just fine, but the following error message is provided when trying to open the file Excel file after execution:
Excel cannot open the file excelTest.xlsm because the file format or
file extension is not valid. Verify that the file has not been
corrupted and that the file extenstion matches the format of the file
Does anyone know what's going on here? Or is there perhaps a better way to do this than using pd.ExcelWrite?
The details:
I've got three files in the directory C:\pythontest:
1. input.txt
2. excelTest.xlsm
1. pythonTest.py
input.txt is a comma separated text file with this content:
A,B,C
1,4,6
2,5,5
3,5,6
excelTest.xlsm is an Excel file that is completely empty with the exception of of one empty sheet named Sheet1.
pythonTest.py is a script where I'm trying to read the txt file using Python, and then write a pandas dataframe to the Excel file:
import os
import pandas as pd
os.getcwd()
os.chdir('C:/pythonTest')
os.listdir(os.getcwd())
df = pd.read_csv('C:\\pythonTest\\input.txt')
writer = pd.ExcelWriter('excelTest.xlsm')
df.to_excel(writer,'Sheet2')
writer.save()
But as I've mentioned, it fails spectacularly. Any suggestions?
System info:
Windows 7, 64 bit
Excel Version 1803
Python 3.6.6 | Anaconda custom (64-bit) |
Pandas 0.23.4
EDIT 1 - print(df) output as requested in the comments:
Pandas requires that a workbook name ends in .xls or .xlsx. It uses the extension to choose which Excel engine to use.
So the problem you've got is the extension, due to "extension hardening" Excel won't open this file since it knows that it doesn't contain a macro and isn't actually an xlsm file. Writing to excelTest.xlsx should work!

python xlrd errors related to file extension changes

I am trying to organize a very large number of .DTA files using the xlrd library.
The first thing I found out was that .DTA files could be exported to excel files just by changing the extension .xls and opening them in excel. It gives a warning when you open it gives an error about a possibly corrupted file, but opens normally otherwise.
the file you are trying to open is in a different format than specified by the file extension. Verify that the file is not corrupted and is from a trusted source before opening the file. Do you want to open the file now?
When in python however, when I try to open the file all I get is an error with no helpful information, which I'm pretty sure is caused by the file extension issue.
File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line 1323, in getbof
raise XLRDError('Expected BOF record; found 0x%04x' % opcode)
XLRDError: Expected BOF record; found 0x5845
I tried my code by cutting and pasting the data into a new excel file and naming it the same thing and it worked, so I'm pretty sure this is the issue, but I have too many files to be able to do this for each one individually.
Is there a better way to solve this? Supressing the error or actually changing the file type and not just its extension somehow?
I think there is a Byte Order Mark at the beginning of the file that is not observable but exists. This answer describes how to remove it < converting utf-16 -> utf-8 AND remove BOM>.

python excel processing error

I am working on the excel processing using python.
I am using xlrd module (version 0.6.1) for the same.
I am abe to fetch most of the excel files but for some excel files it gives me error as :
XLRDError: Expected BOF record; found 0x213c
Can anyone let me know about how to solve this issue?
thanks in advance.
What you have is most probably an "XML Spreadsheet 2003 (*.xml)" file ... "<!" aka "\x3c\x21" (which is what XML streams start with) is being interpreted as the little-endian number 0x213c.
Notepad: First two lines:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?mso-application progid="Excel.Sheet"?>
You can also check this by opening the file with Excel and then click on Save As and look at the file-type that is displayed. While you are there, save it as an XLS file so that your xlrd can read it.
Note: this XML file is NOT the Excel 2007+ XLSX file. An XLSX is actually a ZIP file (starts with "PK", not "<?") containing a bunch of XML streams.

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