PSExcel: Excel automation without Excel Overview (2015) | Hacker News Reader

PSExcel: Excel automation without Excel Overview (2015)

ramblingcookiemonster.github.io

25 pointsleonry7 comments

Doug Finke's module became ImportExcel (which can also export): https://github.com/dfinke/ImportExcel

The only problem is that the EPPlus library is no longer open source, so features may stall. It's still a very good module, though.

openpyxl is also handy (Python library for working with Excel files)

Used it with Pydantic to parse some Excel sheets. Works pretty well!

Pro/cons over python pandas?

If you're already using python or powershell, you're not going to switch for one library (I.e. pandas or ImportExcel).

For this library in particular, powershell is already installed on the computers of 95%+ of non-dev admin workers. It fills the niche that VBA used to of shadow-IT automation.

> It fills the niche that VBA used to of shadow-IT automation.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing does. People who haven't used it just won't know :-(

The full Visual Basic with GUI drag-drop forms designer[1] mash-up with Microsoft Excel, so the spreadsheet is the form and you can drag-drop the standard components like buttons and textboxes onto the spreadsheet[2], doubleclick them and be inside the full VBA IDE in a button handler subroutine with syntax highlighting and autocomplete and classic on-device full language help and everything[3].

Sure you can't easily version control the code, audit the code, and all that, but it was beautifully hacky and convenient in the way that only "automating a GUI program" can be, and PowerShell and Python can never be, and smartphone apps never are, and web apps never are[4], and nothing I know of has replaced it.

[1] https://devclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/vb6-768x565....

[2] https://www.homeandlearn.org/images/user_forms/launch_form_b... and https://analystcave.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/excel-vba...

[3] https://process.filestackapi.com/cache=expiry:max/XJdCsULaRU...

[4] Userscripts and Greasemonkey and the like make it somewhat possible, but it is not convenient or beautiful or properly supported.

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