The XLRD python module for reading excel spreadsheets - Installation

In the last post we have seen the introduction of the xlrd module. If you have missed it, you can see it from here: The XLRD python module for reading spreadsheets files - Introduction. We have seen the problems xlrd development team faced with the dates stored in the spreadsheets and the encoding. 

In this post on Installation we will see how to install the module using pip, easy_install, virtualenv and manual installation. 

Installation

xlrd module doesn't depend on any third party libraries other than python standard library. 

pip
If you want to use pip to install the xlrd package then you can do as follows:

$ pip install xlrd

easy_install
You can also install the xlrd package using easy install as follows:

$ easy_install xlrd

virtualenv
You might sometimes have experienced that you want to install two libraries with same name or different versions of the same library. Also you don't want to install certain package to the whole computer but to a certain extent. In these cases virtualenv comes to your rescue. What actually virutalenv does is that it creates an isolated python environment and you can install a given module or package in that isolated place rather than your whole computer. If you want to know more about virtualenv then you can have a look at the official documentation:  Virtualenv
If you want to install xlrd package using virtual environment, then you can do as follows:
cd to the required directory where you want to create virtual environment.

$ cd path/for/installation

Create a directory here if you want:

$ mkdir xlrd

cd into the new directory:

$ cd xlrd

Now create the virtualenv here:

$ virtualenv xlrd-venv

Now we will activate the virtual environment so that we can install our xlrd package:

• If you are on windows:

  $ xlrd-test\Scripts\activate
  

• If you are on OSX or any other linux distribution then:

  $ . xlrd-test/bin/activate
  

You will see "(xlrd-test)" at the start of the prompt and this indicates that the virutal environment has been activated.
Now you can simply install the module using pip or easy_install as we have seen previously:

$ pip install xlrd

Manual Installation
You can also install the module by downloading the package from pypi or any other source. First unzip the folder if it is zipped, cd into the folder where the setup.py file is located and do the following:

$ python setup.py install

We have come to an end of this post, I am assuming that you should have used any of the options below and have installed the xlrd module so that we can use it in our further posts. If you are facing any problem installing the xlrd module then you can see more options from here: Installing python Modules

As always I have tried to explain each and every part in this post in such a way that it is easy for everyone to understand. But if you have any doubt or didn't understand anything you can comment in the comment box below or contact me. I will respond to your query as soon as possible. You can contact me from here: Contact me

Please do comment on how I can improve this post so that it will be useful even for beginners. Also comment if I have made any typo or you want me to add any section in this post.

"Knowledge has to be shared, improved, challenged and increased constantly or it will vanish"- Peter F drucker

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References:
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The xlrd module
Installing python modules