Python Excel date/time read in issue

Question

I am trying to read dates/time off an excel sheet using Python, but I only want to read in the time so I can perform computations on it. For example if I have a date in the format: 3/11/2003 4:03:00 AM on my excel sheet how can I read in just the 4:03:00 in Python? I ultimately want to be able to subtract hours, mins, or seconds from the read in time.

Answer 1

The best option would be to convert the date to datetime using xldate_as_tuple. Assuming you have an test.xls file with 3/11/2003 4:03:00 AM in the A1 cell:

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import xlrd

book = xlrd.open_workbook(filename='test.xls')
sheet = book.sheet_by_name('Sheet1')

date = sheet.cell_value(0, 0)
datetime_value = datetime(*xlrd.xldate_as_tuple(date, 0))

print datetime_value  # prints 2003-11-03 04:03:00
print datetime_value.time()  # 04:03:00
print datetime_value - timedelta(hours=1)  # prints 2003-11-03 03:03:00

Hope that helps.