Stefan Baerisch - The Boring Python Office Talk   Automate Powerpoint, Excel, and PDF with Python
Channel: EuroPython Conference
Date: 2018-09-06

The Boring Python Office Talk - Automate Powerpoint, Excel, and PDF with Python
[EuroPython 2018 - Talk - 2018-07-27 - Moorfoot]
[Edinburgh, UK]

By Stefan Baerisch

We will have a quick tour of the many ways Python gives us to handle DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, and PDF and automate some boring office tasks.

Many things are more interesting than office file formats like DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, and PDF. Still, while working with office formats does not seem to be the most fun, it is useful. But we can do better than just useful. With the Python and some great libraries, it is possible to have Python do much of the work you would have to do otherwise:


Create and modify PDF files.
Create Powerpoints presentations from scripts.
Create Excel files, from simple tables to charts and reports.
Combine information in Word documents.


In this talk, we will have a look at a usual working day for Bob and Ann, two fictional office works. Both Bob and Ann work office jobs, but while Bob does all of his work by hand, but Ann knows Python. We will look at different tasks that Bob wants to do, such as preparing an Excel report, building a Powerpoint presentation, or rearranging a PDF. Then, we will look how Ann use Python and some exciting libraries to automate these task.

During the talk, we will use Bob and Ann to consider different task related to office file formats. We will then look at the Python libraries that are available. Then, using this library, we will see how an otherwise boring task can be automated. 
The goal of the task is to showcase the libraries to Python offers to work with standard office formats and provide you with a starting point for your own office automation.

After this talk, you will know how to automate at least some of your daily office tasks. You may also be bored because Python is doing so much of your work for you.  If you know basic Python programming, you will be right at home. There will be some use of Pandas,  but it is not required.



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