Convert multiple corrupt XLS files to XLSX | Python in Finance #5

In this article you will learn how to convert a batch of corrupt XLS files to an XLSX file.

Trade-off of automating this process

In this article, you will learn how to automate the conversion process from (corrupt) xls files to normal xlsx files.

Data can be found: here

Packages

• pywin32: This package is basically vba for python. It allows us to interact and automate Windows applications with python.
• os: This package allows us to use the operating system.
• glob: This package allows us to create a list with the different file locations

import win32com.client
import os
import glob

Initialization

• You initialize the win32com and let it run an excel application.
• Set the object “o.Visible = False” in order to hide the excel application you have created.
• Set the input directory: This is the directory where all your corrupt xls files are located.
• Set the output directory: This is the directory where you want to store the converted xlsx files.
• Create a list of file paths of the all the files in the input directory by using the glob.glob function