Excel Python API
Excel Python API
xlwt and xlrd can read and write Excel files, without using Excel itself:
Long time after the original question, but last answer pushed it top of feed again. Others might benefit from my experience using python and excel.
I am using excel and python quite bit. Instead of using the xlrd, xlwt modules directly, I normally use pandas. I think pandas uses these modules as imports, but i find it much easier using the pandas provided framework to create and read the spreadsheets. Pandass Dataframe structure is very spreadsheet-like and makes life a lot easier in my opinion.
The other option that I use (not in direct answer to your problem) is DataNitro. It allows you to use python directly within excel. Different use case, but you would use it where you would normally have to write VBA code in Excel.
Excel Python API
there is Python library to read/write Excel 2007 xlsx/xlsm files http://pythonhosted.org/openpyxl/