Python XLRD use Range

I want to assign an excel range to a variable:

import xlrd

file = r"C:\Users\Lisa\Desktop\Frank\export.XLSX"
book = xlrd.open_workbook(file)
sheet = book.sheet_by_index(0)
data = [range("A3:D7")]

, but I get an error:

    data = [range("A3:D7")]
TypeError: 'str' object cannot be interpreted as an integer

Any ideas?

You could use the following to extract a block from an XLS file as follows:

from itertools import product
import xlrd

workbook = xlrd.open_workbook(r"input.xls")
sheet = workbook.sheet_by_index(0)

# Build a cell lookup table
cell_refs = {xlrd.cellname(r, c) : (c, r) for r, c in product(range(sheet.nrows), range(sheet.ncols))}

def get_cell_range(start_col, start_row, end_col, end_row):
    return [sheet.row_slice(row, start_colx=start_col, end_colx=end_col+1) for row in range(start_row, end_row+1)]

def get_cells(excel_range):
    start_range, end_range = excel_range.split(":")
    return get_cell_range(*cell_refs[start_range], *cell_refs[end_range])


# Use numeric cell references
data = get_cell_range(0, 2, 3, 6)   # A3 to D7
print(data)

# Use Excel range format
data = get_cells("A3:D7")
print(data)

xlrd works using column and row numbers starting from 0 instead of Excel cell names. It can only convert Excel cell references from col row format to A1 format using xlrd.cellname(), not the other way around. A workaround is to build your own reverse lookup table using that function.

Note: older versions of XLRD supported Excel XLSX files. Now only XLS files are supported. For XLSX files consider using openpyxl or Pandas.