I've been parsing Excel documents in Perl successfully with Spreadhsheet::ParseExcel (as recommended in What's the best way to parse Excel file in Perl?), but I can't figure out how to extract cell comments.
Any ideas? A solution in Perl or Ruby would be ideal.
One option is to use Ruby's win32ole library.
The following (somewhat verbose) example connects to an open Excel worksheet and gets the comment text from cell B2.
require 'win32ole'
xl = WIN32OLE.connect('Excel.Application')
ws = xl.ActiveSheet
cell = ws.Range('B2')
comment = cell.Comment
text = comment.Text
More info and examples of using Ruby's win32ole library to automate Excel can be found here:
http://rubyonwindows.blogspot.com/search/label/excel
The Python xlrd library will parse cell comments (if you turn on xlrd.sheet.OBJ_MSO_DEBUG, you'll see them), but it doesn't expose them from the API. You could either parse the dump or hack on it a bit so you can get to them programmatically. Here's a start (tested extremely minimally):
diff --git a/xlrd/sheet.py b/xlrd/sheet.py
--- a/xlrd/sheet.py
+++ b/xlrd/sheet.py
@@ -206,6 +206,7 @@
self._dimncols = 0
self._cell_values = []
self._cell_types = []
+ self._cell_notes = []
self._cell_xf_indexes = []
self._need_fix_ragged_rows = 0
self.defcolwidth = None
@@ -252,6 +253,7 @@
return Cell(
self._cell_types[rowx][colx],
self._cell_values[rowx][colx],
+ self._cell_notes[rowx][colx],
xfx,
)
@@ -422,12 +424,14 @@
if self.formatting_info:
self._cell_xf_indexes[nrx].extend(aa('h', [-1]) * nextra)
self._cell_values[nrx].extend([''] * nextra)
+ self._cell_notes[nrx].extend([None] * nextra)
if nc > self.ncols:
self.ncols = nc
self._need_fix_ragged_rows = 1
if nr > self.nrows:
scta = self._cell_types.append
scva = self._cell_values.append
+ scna = self._cell_notes.append
scxa = self._cell_xf_indexes.append
fmt_info = self.formatting_info
xce = XL_CELL_EMPTY
@@ -436,6 +440,7 @@
for _unused in xrange(self.nrows, nr):
scta([xce] * nc)
scva([''] * nc)
+ scna([None] * nc)
if fmt_info:
scxa([-1] * nc)
else:
@@ -443,6 +448,7 @@
for _unused in xrange(self.nrows, nr):
scta(aa('B', [xce]) * nc)
scva([''] * nc)
+ scna([None] * nc)
if fmt_info:
scxa(aa('h', [-1]) * nc)
self.nrows = nr
@@ -454,6 +460,7 @@
aa = array_array
s_cell_types = self._cell_types
s_cell_values = self._cell_values
+ s_cell_notes = self._cell_notes
s_cell_xf_indexes = self._cell_xf_indexes
s_dont_use_array = self.dont_use_array
s_fmt_info = self.formatting_info
@@ -465,6 +472,7 @@
nextra = ncols - rlen
if nextra > 0:
s_cell_values[rowx][rlen:] = [''] * nextra
+ s_cell_notes[rowx][rlen:] = [None] * nextra
if s_dont_use_array:
trow[rlen:] = [xce] * nextra
if s_fmt_info:
@@ -600,6 +608,7 @@
bk_get_record_parts = bk.get_record_parts
bv = self.biff_version
fmt_info = self.formatting_info
+ txos = {}
eof_found = 0
while 1:
# if DEBUG: print "SHEET.READ: about to read from position %d" % bk._position
@@ -877,13 +886,23 @@
break
elif rc == XL_OBJ:
# handle SHEET-level objects; note there's a separate Book.handle_obj
- self.handle_obj(data)
+ obj = self.handle_obj(data)
+ if obj:
+ obj_id = obj.id
+ else:
+ obj_id = None
elif rc == XL_MSO_DRAWING:
self.handle_msodrawingetc(rc, data_len, data)
elif rc == XL_TXO:
- self.handle_txo(data)
+ txo = self.handle_txo(data)
+ if txo and obj_id:
+ txos[obj_id] = txo
+ obj_id = None
elif rc == XL_NOTE:
- self.handle_note(data)
+ note = self.handle_note(data)
+ txo = txos.get(note.object_id)
+ if txo:
+ self._cell_notes[note.rowx][note.colx] = txo.text
elif rc == XL_FEAT11:
self.handle_feat11(data)
elif rc in bofcodes: ##### EMBEDDED BOF #####
@@ -1387,19 +1406,16 @@
def handle_obj(self, data):
- if not OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
- return
- DEBUG = 1
if self.biff_version < 80:
return
o = MSObj()
data_len = len(data)
pos = 0
- if DEBUG:
+ if OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
fprintf(self.logfile, "... OBJ record ...\n")
while pos < data_len:
ft, cb = unpack('<HH', data[pos:pos+4])
- if DEBUG:
+ if OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
hex_char_dump(data, pos, cb, base=0, fout=self.logfile)
if ft == 0x15: # ftCmo ... s/b first
assert pos == 0
@@ -1430,16 +1446,14 @@
else:
# didn't break out of while loop
assert pos == data_len
- if DEBUG:
+ if OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
o.dump(self.logfile, header="=== MSOBj ===", footer= " ")
+ return o
def handle_note(self, data):
- if not OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
- return
- DEBUG = 1
if self.biff_version < 80:
return
- if DEBUG:
+ if OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
fprintf(self.logfile, '... NOTE record ...\n')
hex_char_dump(data, 0, len(data), base=0, fout=self.logfile)
o = MSNote()
@@ -1453,13 +1467,11 @@
o.original_author, endpos = unpack_unicode_update_pos(data, 8, lenlen=2)
assert endpos == data_len - 1
o.last_byte = data[-1]
- if DEBUG:
+ if OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
o.dump(self.logfile, header="=== MSNote ===", footer= " ")
+ return o
def handle_txo(self, data):
- if not OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
- return
- DEBUG = 1
if self.biff_version < 80:
return
o = MSTxo()
@@ -1477,8 +1489,9 @@
rc3, data3_len, data3 = self.book.get_record_parts()
assert rc3 == XL_CONTINUE
# ignore the formatting runs for the moment
- if DEBUG:
+ if OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
o.dump(self.logfile, header="=== MSTxo ===", footer= " ")
+ return o
def handle_feat11(self, data):
if not OBJ_MSO_DEBUG:
@@ -1638,11 +1651,12 @@
class Cell(BaseObject):
- __slots__ = ['ctype', 'value', 'xf_index']
+ __slots__ = ['ctype', 'value', 'note', 'xf_index']
- def __init__(self, ctype, value, xf_index=None):
+ def __init__(self, ctype, value, note=None, xf_index=None):
self.ctype = ctype
self.value = value
+ self.note = note
self.xf_index = xf_index
def __repr__(self):
Then you could write something like:
import xlrd
xlrd.sheet.OBJ_MSO_DEBUG = True
xls = xlrd.open_workbook('foo.xls')
for sheet in xls.sheets():
print 'sheet %s (%d x %d)' % (sheet.name, sheet.nrows, sheet.ncols)
for rownum in xrange(sheet.nrows):
for cell in sheet.row(rownum):
print cell, cell.note
