xlrd is a library for reading data and formatting information from Excel files in the historical .xls format.

Cell comments are available through Sheet.cell_note_map. Hyperlinks are available through Sheet.hyperlink_list and Sheet.hyperlink_map.

The following are also not supported but will safely and reliably be ignored:

• Charts, Macros, Pictures, any other embedded object, including embedded worksheets.
• VBA modules
• Formulas, but results of formula calculations are extracted.
• Autofilters, advanced filters, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation

Password-protected files are not supported and cannot be read by this library.

Quick start:

pip install xlrd

import xlrd
book = xlrd.open_workbook("myfile.xls")
print("The number of worksheets is {0}".format(book.nsheets))
print("Worksheet name(s): {0}".format(book.sheet_names()))
sh = book.sheet_by_index(0)
print("{0} {1} {2}".format(sh.name, sh.nrows, sh.ncols))
print("Cell D30 is {0}".format(sh.cell_value(rowx=29, colx=3)))
for rx in range(sh.nrows):
    print(sh.row(rx))

From the command line, this will show the first, second and last rows of each sheet in each file:

python PYDIR/scripts/runxlrd.py 3rows *blah*.xls