How can I launch an instance of an application using Python?

Question

I am creating a Python script where it does a bunch of tasks and one of those tasks is to launch and open an instance of Excel. What is the ideal way of accomplishing that in my script?

Answer 1

While the Popen answers are reasonable for the general case, I would recommend win32api for this specific case, if you want to do something useful with it:

It goes something like this:

from win32com.client import Dispatch
xl = Dispatch('Excel.Application')
wb = xl.Workbooks.Open('C:\\Documents and Settings\\GradeBook.xls')
xl.Visible = True    # optional: if you want to see the spreadsheet

Taken from a mailing list post but there are plenty of examples around.