Python for Excel: A Modern Environment for Automation and Data Analysis

Felix Zumstein (FZ), the author of "Python for Excel" (PfE), is an excellent technical writer. Throughout the book he strikes the perfect balance between brief, clear and informative. In the genre of technical writing, PfE is the nearest thing to a page-turner I've encountered. I can honestly say I learned something significant, interesting and useful on nearly every page of the book.Part I, Part II and the three appendices cover Python and the powerful pandas data analysis package. As an experienced coder with little prior exposure to Python, I found these sections of the book to be quick and easy to read, and I'm now using them as a reference that I turn to again and again as I bolster my Python skills. If you're looking to get up to speed with Python, I believe you'll find PfE to be a great resource, even if you don't plan to use Excel or VBA in your work.Part III and Part IV cover the bidirectional integration of Python with Excel and VBA, and usage of the xlwings package to simplify this complicated task. As an experienced Excel + VBA developer with considerable prior exposure to cross-platform work, I find using PfE + xlwings to integrate with Python to be a relative cakewalk. If you're looking to integrate Python with Excel and VBA, I believe PfE + xlwings is the way to go, and I strongly recommend them to you.I'll close by sharing some information about me for context. I've been developing quantitative models/applications for a long time, and I have considerable experience coding with C/C++, C# and S-Plus/R, and a lot of experience coding with VBA for Excel. As far as Python goes, though, I had only dabbled with it before now. I have a few Python books on my bookshelf, but none of them had inspired me to take the plunge and really learn it. Then PfE came along and, because I'm an avid Excel user and developer, I was excited to buy a copy and dive headlong into Python. PfE proved to be a tremendously worthwhile investment for me, both in terms of the nominal cost of the book and in terms of the considerable time to work through it. Python is now an indispensable tool in my coding tool kit; I've started developing a Python-powered Excel workbook add-in of my own, and I'm confident it will greatly streamline my quantitative development and quantitative analysis efforts in the very near future and for many years to come. Thank you FZ for sharing your incredible work with me, by way of the book and by way of xlwings.

Great book if you've never touched code before outside of excel - very good intro to python. Also very friendly author - spoke to him on reddit and he recommended xlwings lite to me (which I recommend to all of you) which is something he made after the publishing of this book.

A good book if you wish to pursue Python in Excel. It goes into details.Having read the book, I am convinced that it is best to pursue Python on its own which offer more tools and it is an open source, free-to-use software.Better to use Python direct than to go via another platform.

This is the single most useful book I have read as a beginner/intermediate Excel user seeking modern tools for automating Excel and performing robust data analysis. The content is presented in a logical, clear, and engaging manner starting with setting up modern tools and Python foundations to automation using pandas and xlwings to building full-fledged applications. The author does a great job of guiding you carefully through the journey assuming only basic Excel knowledge. Also, the book explains the reasoning behind why using Python is a superior choice to VBA and how it can be used to replace the functionality of most native Excel data analysis tools. This book has saved me so much time and energy in my Excel tasks, while also increasing the accuracy and reliability of these tasks. Highly recommend.

This was a pleasure to read because the author has a gift for presenting technical details in a clear, easily understandable fashion.He presents intriguing ways to enhance Excel functionality by using Python with xlwings in place of VBA scripts. He makes a good case for why Python is simpler, safer and more powerful than VBA.He also shows how Python (and/or Jupyter Notebooks) can be used to completely replace Excel in some use cases.Although I'm not an expert in Excel, VBA or Python I found this book very easy to follow and comprehend.My compliments to Felix Zumstein for this impressive book.

Until I read this book, I was not aware there were so many applications for python and Excel to work together. I am not a developer, yet I was able to apply the concepts and tools presented here (especially xlwings) to build my own applications for my work in finance. Felix does a great job of demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of the tools available for integrating python and Excel, with lots of practical examples. I found xlwings to be most helpful and I am using it regularly at my work.

This book is a unique resource and invaluable reference for anyone looking to move beyond Excel VBA. Outstanding coverage with many details I haven't seen collected anywhere else. The author created xlwings years ago - which is a gift to the Excel community in its own right - and continues to develop more impressive capabilities with it. And his book covers many more topics that are highly relevant. Highest recommendation.