Installation

Prerequisites

  • xlwings (Open Source) requires an installation of Excel and therefore only works on Windows and macOS. Note that macOS currently does not support UDFs.

  • xlwings PRO offers additional features:
    • File Reader (new in v0.28.0): Runs additionally on Linux and doesn’t require an installation of Excel.

    • xlwings Server (new in v0.26.0). Runs additionally on Linux and doesn’t require a local installation of Python. Works with Desktop Excel on Windows and macOS as well as with Excel on the web and Google Sheets.

  • xlwings requires at least Python 3.9.

Here are previous versions of xlwings that support older versions of Python:

  • Python 3.8: 0.31.10

  • Python 3.7: 0.30.9

  • Python 3.6: 0.25.3

  • Python 3.5: 0.19.5

  • Python 2.7: 0.16.6

xlwings Python package

xlwings comes pre-installed with

  • Anaconda (Windows and macOS)

  • WinPython (Windows only) Make sure not to take the dot version as this only contains Python.

If you are new to Python or have trouble installing xlwings, one of these distributions is highly recommended. Otherwise, you can also install it with pip:

pip install xlwings

or conda:

conda install xlwings

Note that the official conda package might be a few releases behind. You can, however, use the conda-forge channel (replace install with upgrade if xlwings is already installed):

conda install -c conda-forge xlwings

xlwings Excel Add-in

To install the add-in, run the following command:

xlwings addin install

To automate Excel from Python, you don’t need an add-in. Also, you can use a single file VBA module (standalone workbook) instead of the add-in. For more details, see Add-in & Settings.

Note

The add-in needs to be the same version as the Python package. Make sure to run xlwings add install again after upgrading the xlwings package.

Note

When you are on macOS and are using the VBA standalone module instead of the add-in, you need to run $ xlwings runpython install once.

Dependencies

For automating Excel, you’ll need the following dependencies:

  • Windows: pywin32

  • Mac: psutil, appscript

The dependencies are automatically installed via conda or pip. If you would like to install xlwings without dependencies, you can run pip install xlwings --no-deps.

How to activate xlwings PRO

See xlwings PRO.

Optional Dependencies

  • NumPy

  • pandas

  • Matplotlib

  • Pillow

  • Jinja2 (for xlwings.reports)

These packages are not required but highly recommended as they play very nicely with xlwings. They are all pre-installed with Anaconda. With pip, you can install xlwings with all optional dependencies as follows:

pip install "xlwings[all]"

Update

To update to the latest xlwings version, run the following in a command prompt:

pip install --upgrade xlwings

or:

conda update -c conda-forge xlwings

Make sure to keep your version of the Excel add-in in sync with your Python package by running the following (make sure to close Excel first):

xlwings addin install

Note

If you get an Object required error with UDFs after an update, re-import the functions and recalculate the workbook via Ctrl+Alt+F9.

Uninstall

To uninstall xlwings completely, first uninstall the add-in, then uninstall the xlwings package using the same method (pip or conda) that you used for installing it:

xlwings addin remove

Then

pip uninstall xlwings

or:

conda remove xlwings

Finally, manually remove the .xlwings directory in your home folder if it exists.