Call Python and R Scripts From Excel

Learn how to integrate your Python or R data processing tasks into excel

Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash

Preamble

I love wrangling, munging, and processing data in Python or R.

However, my employer does most everything in Excel. I wanted to take my Python or R code and integrate it within my Excel documents.

Furthermore, I needed to output the results directly into the Excel workbook.

I found I could implement this with minimal Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) scripts, and rearrange my Python or R scripts into apps.

If you are looking to streamline your Excel workflow with Python and R, then this tutorial is for you!

Overview

At my job, everything is split up amongst a bunch of different Excel sheets. Some are output from different software programs (which I do weekly), and some are pre-processed by the company themselves.

When working with these documents, I am either trying to automate a previously manual process, or improving on an existing Excel workbook that could benefit from some data processing with Python or R.

The order of operations that I have found work best for me are the following: