Edit existing excel workbooks and sheets with xlrd and xlwt

Question

In the documentation for xlrd and xlwt I have learned the following:

How to read from existing work-books/sheets:

from xlrd         


        

Answer 1

Here's another way of doing the code above using the openpyxl module that's compatible with xlsx. From what I've seen so far, it also keeps formatting.

from openpyxl import load_workbook
wb = load_workbook('names.xlsx')
ws = wb['SheetName']
ws['A1'] = 'A1'
wb.save('names.xlsx')

Answer 2

As I wrote in the edits of the op, to edit existing excel documents you must use the xlutils module (Thanks Oliver)

Here is the proper way to do it:

#xlrd, xlutils and xlwt modules need to be installed.  
#Can be done via pip install <module>
from xlrd import open_workbook
from xlutils.copy import copy

rb = open_workbook("names.xls")
wb = copy(rb)

s = wb.get_sheet(0)
s.write(0,0,'A1')
wb.save('names.xls')

This replaces the contents of the cell located at a1 in the first sheet of "names.xls" with the text "a1", and then saves the document.