In general a formula in Excel can be used directly in the
write_formula()
method:
worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=10*B1 + C1')
However, there are a few potential issues and differences that the user should be aware of. These are explained in the following sections.
Excel stores formulas in the format of the US English version, regardless of the language or locale of the end-user’s version of Excel. Therefore all formula function names written using XlsxWriter must be in English:
worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=SUM(1, 2, 3)') # OK
worksheet.write_formula('A2', '=SOMME(1, 2, 3)') # French. Error on load.
Also, formulas must be written with the US style separator/range operator which is a comma (not semi-colon). Therefore a formula with multiple values should be written as follows:
worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=SUM(1, 2, 3)') # OK
worksheet.write_formula('A2', '=SUM(1; 2; 3)') # Semi-colon. Error on load.
If you have a non-English version of Excel you can use the following multi-lingual formula translator to help you convert the formula. It can also replace semi-colons with commas.
Excel 2010 and later added functions which weren’t defined in the original
file specification. These functions are referred to by Microsoft as future
functions. Examples of these functions are ACOT
, CHISQ.DIST.RT
,
CONFIDENCE.NORM
, STDEV.P
, STDEV.S
and WORKDAY.INTL
.
When written using write_formula()
these functions need to be fully
qualified with a _xlfn.
(or other) prefix as they are shown the list
below. For example:
worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=_xlfn.STDEV.S(B1:B10)')
They will appear without the prefix in Excel:
The following list is taken from MS XLSX extensions documentation on future functions.
_xlfn.ACOT
_xlfn.ACOTH
_xlfn.AGGREGATE
_xlfn.ARABIC
_xlfn.BASE
_xlfn.BETA.DIST
_xlfn.BETA.INV
_xlfn.BINOM.DIST
_xlfn.BINOM.DIST.RANGE
_xlfn.BINOM.INV
_xlfn.BITAND
_xlfn.BITLSHIFT
_xlfn.BITOR
_xlfn.BITRSHIFT
_xlfn.BITXOR
_xlfn.CEILING.MATH
_xlfn.CEILING.PRECISE
_xlfn.CHISQ.DIST
_xlfn.CHISQ.DIST.RT
_xlfn.CHISQ.INV
_xlfn.CHISQ.INV.RT
_xlfn.CHISQ.TEST
_xlfn.COMBINA
_xlfn.CONFIDENCE.NORM
_xlfn.CONFIDENCE.T
_xlfn.COT
_xlfn.COTH
_xlfn.COVARIANCE.P
_xlfn.COVARIANCE.S
_xlfn.CSC
_xlfn.CSCH
_xlfn.DAYS
_xlfn.DECIMAL
ECMA.CEILING
_xlfn.ERF.PRECISE
_xlfn.ERFC.PRECISE
_xlfn.EXPON.DIST
_xlfn.F.DIST
_xlfn.F.DIST.RT
_xlfn.F.INV
_xlfn.F.INV.RT
_xlfn.F.TEST
_xlfn.FILTERXML
_xlfn.FLOOR.MATH
_xlfn.FLOOR.PRECISE
_xlfn.FORECAST.ETS
_xlfn.FORECAST.ETS.CONFINT
_xlfn.FORECAST.ETS.SEASONALITY
_xlfn.FORECAST.ETS.STAT
_xlfn.FORECAST.LINEAR
_xlfn.FORMULATEXT
_xlfn.GAMMA
_xlfn.GAMMA.DIST
_xlfn.GAMMA.INV
_xlfn.GAMMALN.PRECISE
_xlfn.GAUSS
_xlfn.HYPGEOM.DIST
_xlfn.IFNA
_xlfn.IMCOSH
_xlfn.IMCOT
_xlfn.IMCSC
_xlfn.IMCSCH
_xlfn.IMSEC
_xlfn.IMSECH
_xlfn.IMSINH
_xlfn.IMTAN
_xlfn.ISFORMULA
ISO.CEILING
_xlfn.ISOWEEKNUM
_xlfn.LOGNORM.DIST
_xlfn.LOGNORM.INV
_xlfn.MODE.MULT
_xlfn.MODE.SNGL
_xlfn.MUNIT
_xlfn.NEGBINOM.DIST
NETWORKDAYS.INTL
_xlfn.NORM.DIST
_xlfn.NORM.INV
_xlfn.NORM.S.DIST
_xlfn.NORM.S.INV
_xlfn.NUMBERVALUE
_xlfn.PDURATION
_xlfn.PERCENTILE.EXC
_xlfn.PERCENTILE.INC
_xlfn.PERCENTRANK.EXC
_xlfn.PERCENTRANK.INC
_xlfn.PERMUTATIONA
_xlfn.PHI
_xlfn.POISSON.DIST
_xlfn.QUARTILE.EXC
_xlfn.QUARTILE.INC
_xlfn.QUERYSTRING
_xlfn.RANK.AVG
_xlfn.RANK.EQ
_xlfn.RRI
_xlfn.SEC
_xlfn.SECH
_xlfn.SHEET
_xlfn.SHEETS
_xlfn.SKEW.P
_xlfn.STDEV.P
_xlfn.STDEV.S
_xlfn.T.DIST
_xlfn.T.DIST.2T
_xlfn.T.DIST.RT
_xlfn.T.INV
_xlfn.T.INV.2T
_xlfn.T.TEST
_xlfn.UNICHAR
_xlfn.UNICODE
_xlfn.VAR.P
_xlfn.VAR.S
_xlfn.WEBSERVICE
_xlfn.WEIBULL.DIST
WORKDAY.INTL
_xlfn.XOR
_xlfn.Z.TEST
Worksheet tables can be added with XlsxWriter using the add_table()
method:
worksheet.add_table('B3:F7', {options})
By default tables are named Table1
, Table2
, etc., in the order that
they are added. However it can also be set by the user using the name
parameter:
worksheet.add_table('B3:F7', {'name': 'SalesData'})
If you need to know the name of the table, for example to use it in a formula, you can get it as follows:
table = worksheet.add_table('B3:F7')
table_name = table.name
When used in a formula a table name such as TableX
should be referred to
as TableX[]
(like a Python list):
worksheet.write_formula('A5', '=VLOOKUP("Sales", Table1[], 2, FALSE')
If there is an error in the syntax of a formula it is usually displayed in
Excel as #NAME?
. Alternatively you may get a warning from Excel when the
file is loaded. If you encounter an error like this you can debug it as
follows:
Finally if you have completed all the previous steps and still get a
#NAME?
error you can examine a valid Excel file to see what the correct
syntax should be. To do this you should create a valid formula in Excel and
save the file. You can then examine the XML in the unzipped file.
The following shows how to do that using Linux unzip
and libxml’s xmllint to format the XML for clarity:
$ unzip myfile.xlsx -d myfile
$ xmllint --format myfile/xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml | grep '<f>'
<f>SUM(1, 2, 3)</f>
XlsxWriter doesn’t calculate the result of a formula and instead stores the value 0 as the formula result. It then sets a global flag in the XLSX file to say that all formulas and functions should be recalculated when the file is opened.
This is the method recommended in the Excel documentation and in general it works fine with spreadsheet applications. However, applications that don’t have a facility to calculate formulas will only display the 0 results. Examples of such applications are Excel Viewer, PDF Converters, and some mobile device applications.
If required, it is also possible to specify the calculated result of the
formula using the optional value
parameter for write_formula()
:
worksheet.write_formula('A1', '=2+2', num_format, 4)
The value
parameter can be a number, a string, a bool or one of the
following Excel error codes:
#DIV/0!
#N/A
#NAME?
#NULL!
#NUM!
#REF!
#VALUE!
It is also possible to specify the calculated result of an array formula
created with write_array_formula()
:
# Specify the result for a single cell range.
worksheet.write_array_formula('A1:A1', '{=SUM(B1:C1*B2:C2)}', format, 2005)
However, using this parameter only writes a single value to the upper left
cell in the result array. For a multi-cell array formula where the results are
required, the other result values can be specified by using write_number()
to write to the appropriate cell:
# Specify the results for a multi cell range.
worksheet.write_array_formula('A1:A3', '{=TREND(C1:C3,B1:B3)}', format, 15)
worksheet.write_number('A2', 12, format)
worksheet.write_number('A3', 14, format)