RobustExcelOle¶ ↑

RobustExcelOle helps controlling Excel. This obviously includes standard tasks like reading and writing Excel workbooks.

RobustExcelOle objects wrap WIN32OLE objects, like workbooks, worksheets and ranges. All applicable VBA methods can be sent to those objects. For solving complex tasks, convenient methods are added.

The gem is designed to manage simultaneously running Excel instances, even with simultanously happening user interactions. It supports handling workbooks across those Excel instances by keeping track of workbooks and instances. Conflicts are managed before Excel notices.

RobustExcelOle deals with various cases of Excel (and user) behaviour, and supplies workarounds for some Excel and JRuby bugs.

Because it uses VBA methods, RobustExcelOle runs on Windows only.

RobustExcelOle supports

• opening and processing workbooks across various Excel instances

• standard tasks like opening, reading, writing, saving, closing workbooks

• dealing with simultanously happening user interactions

• dealing with various cases of Excel and user behaviour

• managing conflicts when opening workbooks (e.g. blocking or unsaved workbooks)

• workarounds for Excel bugs and JRuby bugs

• availability of all VBA methods

• availability of the Excel constants (in form if Ruby constants: Excel constant.capitalize)

• all standard Excel file formats (.xlsx, .xls, .xlsm)

• reopening workbooks after closing them

• unobtrusively opening workbooks, i.e. opening and processing workbooks while preserving their status, e.g. saved, readonly

• reading and writing workbooks, worksheets, list objects, ranges, rows, columns, cells

• naming, adding, and copying ranges and worksheets

• references to other Excel libraries

• console for interactive mode

Ruby 2.1 or higher.

You can install the gem by running the command

gem install robust_excel_ole

or by using bundler and putting the following line in your Gemfile.

gem 'robust_excel_ole'

RobustExcelOle can be used either for scripts

require 'robust_excel_ole'
include RobustExcelOle

or as a console. You can start the console via the command

reo

If you want to start the console under jruby, and if you don’t want to use a version manager to switch between ruby and jruby, then use the command

jreo

The call of the console will include RobustExcelOle for you. The consoles require the ruby gem ‘pry’ and ‘pry-bond’ to enable the ruby shell ‘pry’ with filename and string completion.

The following examples can be used for both scripts and console. If you have started the console in the gem path, you can just put these examples.

In the following example, we want to open a workbook, modify a cell, save and close the workbook.

Let’s open a workbook.

workbook = Workbook.open 'spec/data/workbook.xls'

Now we have a Workbook object that wraps a WIN32OLE object. That is, we can send any WIN32OLE (VBA) method to it. See docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/excel.workbook#methods.

For example, we can determine the name of the workbook.

workbook.Name 
# => "workbook.xls"

For some common tasks and for considering various complex cases of Excel and user behaviour, more convenient methods are implemented. For example, RobustExcelOle provides methods for reading and writing the contents of ranges, for opening, saving, closing, reopening and unobtrusively opening workbooks, and for setting options.

First we want to make the workbook visible.

workbook.visible = true

This method makes both the Excel instance and the window of the Workbook WIN32OLE object visible.

Let’s read the value of a named cell.

value = workbook['firstcell']
# => "foo"

Now we want to write a new value into this cell.

workbook['firstcell'] = "new"

Then we’ll save and close the workbook.

workbook.save
workbook.close

RobustExcelOle allows unobtrusively reading and modifying workbooks, i.e. accessing workbooks without changing their “status”. The status comprises whether the workbook is open or closed, saved or unsaved, read-only or writable, visible or invisible, whether the calculation mode is manual or automatic, and checking compatibility is done or not done.

Workbook.for_modifying('spec/data/workbook.xls') do |workbook|
  workbook.sheet(1)[1,1] = "bar"
end

Workbook.for_reading('spec/data/workbook.xls') do |workbook|
  value = workbook.sheet(1)[1,1]
end

We can create a new, empty workbook.

Workbook.create('spec/data/new_workbook.xls', visible: true)

Moreover, we can open the workbook using a block, similar to, e.g., File.open.

Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls') do |workbook|
  # do something
end

Note that Workbook.open can also connect to workbooks which were not opened via RobustExcelOle (but had been opened before by some user).

For more details about opening workbooks see README_open. For saving and closing workbooks see README_save_close.

RobustExcelOle enables processing workbooks, while supporting user’s interactions: The commands enable to open, close, reopen, read, modify, write and save Excel workbooks, without the need of the user’s interaction, and even without the user noticing. Thus, while running a script containing RobustExcelOle commands, the user can open and process workbooks in any Excel instances at any time. RobustExcelOle manages the complex cases of conflicts that might occur such that the user does not need to interfere and the script can continue.

For example, suppose we want to process a list of workbooks. RobustExcelOle allows to rapidly open, manipulate, close and save these workbooks. Now assume, the workbook “workbook.xls” is being processed, while the user has already opened this workbook, has modified but not saved it yet. Excel would prompt a message and ask the user what to do. RobustExcelOle solves this conflict by using an option that states whether the changes of the user should be saved (accepted) or discarded (forgotten) before opening the workbook, e.g.

workbook = Workbook.open('workbook.xls', if_unsaved: :accept)

Similarly, if the user has opened a workbook that has the same name but a different path, the conflict can be solved via an option.

workbook1 = Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls')
# do something
workbook2 = Workbook.open('spec/data/more/workbook.xls', if_blocked: :forget)

RobustExcelOle enables opening and processing workbooks in several Excel instances. Using more than one Excel process allows, e.g., running a script that operates in one Excel instance, while a user (or another script) modifies workbooks in another Excel instance.

For example, suppose we want to open a workbook.

workbook1 = Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls')

Now we want to open another workbook in a different Excel instance.

workbook2 = Workbook.open('spec/data/different_workbook.xls', excel: :new)

A workbook is opened by default in the Excel instance where it was open before most recently.

workbook1.close
workbook1 = Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls')

If the Excel instance is damaged or closed, then options control whether the workbook shall be opened in the current (active), a new or a given Excel instance.

workbook1 = Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls', default: {excel: new})

Without the option :default, the workbook can be forced to be opened in the current, a new or a given Excel instance, no matter if and where it was opened before, e.g.

workbook2 = Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls', excel: new)

For more details about opening Excel instances see README_open and README_excel.

Assume we have opened a workbook

workbook = Workbook.open('spec/data/workbook.xls')

We access the first worksheet by

worksheet = workbook.sheet(1)

We can read and change the worksheet name.

worksheet.name
# => "Sheet1"

worksheet.name = "new_sheet"

We can copy the first worksheet, name it and add it before the third worksheet.

workbook.add_or_copy_sheet(sheet, as: "copied_name, before: workbook.last_sheet)

For more details about processing worksheets see README_sheet.

We can define a rectangular range by providing the top left and the bottum down cell.

worksheet.range([1..3,1..4])

We can read and modify the first cell, e.g.

worksheet[1,1]    
# => "foo"
worksheet[1,1] = "hello"

We get the value of a named range

worksheet["firstcell"]    # => "hello"

and set another value to that range.

worksheet["firstcell"] = "new_value"

For more details about reading and writing contents of cells and ranges see README_ranges

We obtain a given list object in a worksheet given its table number or name.

table = worksheet.table(1)

We can also define a list object from scratch

table = ListObject.new(worksheet, "table 1", [1,1], 3, ["Person","AmountSales"])

A list row can be accessed by providing either the row number or a key, i.e. hash of column name - value pairs, e.g.

row1 = table[1]

row1 = table[{"Number": 1, "Person": "John"}]

You can get all or a maximal number of list rows matching the key.

rows = table[{"Number": 1}, limit: nil]
rows = table[{"Number": 1}, limit: 2]

Now we can read and set the value of a cell of the table with help of methods that are underscored variants of the column names, e.g.

row1.person = "John"

or with help of the column name

row1["Person"] = "John"

We can also read all values in a row.

table[1].to_a
# => ["John", 40]

table[1].to_h
# => {"Person": "John", "AmountSales": 40}

For more details about using and processing list objects see README_listobjects.

The class WIN32OLE is being extended such that RobustExcelOle methods can be applied to WIN32OLE objects. As mentioned above, the RobustExcelOle objects are wrapper of corresponding WIN32OLE objects. So now the RobustExcelOle objects and their wrapped WIN32OLE objects are interchangeable. One example would be

range.ole_range.copy([4,3])

Likewise it is possible to convert (“type-lift”) WIN32OLE objects into the corresponding RobustExcelOle object, using the method to_reo. It is a refinement of the class WIN32OLE. So you can write

using ToReoRefinement

range = sheet.Names.Item("firstcell").to_reo

We don’t consider active worksheets or workbooks in our implementation, because this has been proven to be very error-prone.

You can run the examples included in the directory examples, e.g.

ruby examples\open_save_close\example_unobtrusively.rb

This project RobustExcelOle is work in progress. We are happy to implement further features. So we invite you to send your pull requests. We then strive to realize them as soon as possible. If you have any feedback, or you find use cases that RobustExcelOle does not satisfy, please let us know.

RobustExcelOle is being tested for Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. It can be used for any recent Excel Office version. Most functions should run on Excel 2007 as well.

RobustExcelOle has been optimised with help of the rubocop and the rcov tool.

Please contact us and to report issues and feature requests to github Issues. github.com/Thomas008/robust_excel_ole/issues

Please pull request on github.

thomas Thomas.Raths@gmx.net

MIT License. For more imformation, please see LICENSE.