Deployment

Zip files

Added in version 0.15.2.

To make it easier to distribute, you can zip up your Python code into a zip file. If you use UDFs, this will disable the automatic code reload, so this is a feature meant for distribution, not development. In practice, this means that when your code is inside a zip file, you’ll have to click on re-import to get any changes.

If you name your zip file like your Excel file (but with .zip extension) and place it in the same folder as your Excel workbook, xlwings will automatically find it (similar to how it works with a single python file).

If you want to use a different directory, make sure to add it to the PYTHONPATH in your config (Ribbon or config file):

PYTHONPATH, "C:\path\to\myproject.zip"

RunFrozenPython

Changed in version 0.15.2.

You can use a freezer like PyInstaller, cx_Freeze, py2exe etc. to freeze your Python module into an executable so that the recipient doesn’t have to install a full Python distribution.

Note

  • This does not work with UDFs.

  • Currently only available on Windows, but support for Mac should be easy to add.

  • You need at least 0.15.2 to support arguments whereas the syntax changed in 0.15.6

Use it as follows:

Sub MySample()
    RunFrozenPython "C:\path\to\dist\myproject\myproject.exe", "arg1 arg2"
End Sub