Copying excel data into a python list in IPython using clipboard?

Question

Is there a way to perform the following workflow:

1. Select cells in an Excel spreadsheet
2. Copy them using Ctrl+C
3. Get the content the selected cells

Answer 1

If you are on Windows, you can use PyReadline, which has a smart paste feature:

• Copy and paste using the clipboard
• Smart paste for convenient use with ipython. Converting tab separated data to python list or numpy array.

See also the documentation for clipboard functions:

ipython_paste

Paste windows clipboard. If enable_ipython_paste_list_of_lists is True then try to convert tabseparated data to repr of list of lists or repr of array. If enable_ipython_paste_for_paths==True then change \\ to / and spaces to \space.

Answer 2

Here is what I usually do:

1: get a csv file

Copy-paste the cells you want into a new Excel document. Click 'File' then 'Save as'. Select 'Save as type: CSV' . Close Excel and open the file with notepad or other editor.

Now you have something like this:

1, 2, 3
4, 5, 6

2: get a python list

You can either

• use csv to load your csv file; or
• use the search/replace functionality of your editor to replace start/end of lines with '[' and ']' then copy paste to ipython.

Answer 3

Update: It seems that the readline thing that @PauloAlmeida mentioned is turned on by default in the 1.0 verison of IPython. So all you have to do is:

1. from numpy import array
2. Copy the cells from the spreadsheet
3. Hit Alt+V instead of Ctrl+V

And you will get in IPython something like:

array([[1, 1], [2, 2]])

Or you can use the pandas library read_clipboard method.

import pandas as pd
pd.read_clipboard()            # If you have selected the headers
pd.read_clipboard(header=None) # If you haven't selected the headers

This will return you a pandas DataFrame object which acts similarly to a spreadsheet. You can find more about it in their official documentation.