Accessing Microsoft Automation Objects From Python

I have a set of macros that I have turned into an add-in in excel. The macros allow me to interact with another program that has what are called Microsoft Automation Objects that

Solution 1:

You will probably need the win32com package.

This is a sample exemple I found at : http://www.markcarter.me.uk/computing/python/excel.html which shows how to use com with Excel. This might be a good start.

# this example starts Excel, creates a new workbook, 
# puts some text in the first and second cell
# closes the workbook without saving the changes
# and closes Excel.  This happens really fast, so
# you may want to comment out some lines and add them
# back in one at a time ... or do the commands interactively


from win32com.client import Dispatch


xlApp = Dispatch("Excel.Application")
xlApp.Visible = 1
xlApp.Workbooks.Add()
xlApp.ActiveSheet.Cells(1,1).Value = 'Python Rules!'
xlApp.ActiveWorkbook.ActiveSheet.Cells(1,2).Value = 'Python Rules 2!'
xlApp.ActiveWorkbook.Close(SaveChanges=0) # see note 1
xlApp.Quit()
xlApp.Visible = 0 # see note 2
del xlApp

# raw_input("press Enter ...")

Solution 2:

Mark Hammond and Andy Robinson have written the book on accessing Windows COM objects from Python.

Here is an example using Excel.

Solution 3:

As far as I know it is possible to create COM objects (which is what Automation objects are) in Python on Windows. Then assuming you can get out the lists via automation it should be easy to do what you want in python.

Solution 4:

However, though I am still exploring it looks like many of these are old.

COM is old. The interface hasn't changed since at least 1993.

I also don't see the package on the Python.org website. I searched for COM packages but didn't see anything useful.

http://python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

The latest update was Feb 2009, which include Python 3.0 support.