> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-excel@googlegroups.com [mailto:python-
> excel@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of vasudevram
> Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 6:46 PM
> To: python-excel
> Subject: [pyxl] Re: Script to convert from XLSX to XLS

> On Jun 15, 9:29 pm, Michael <selmo2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Recently I needed to quickly convert XLSX workbooks to XLS workbooks
> > so I could then interact with them via xlrd.  Here it is, hopefully
> it
> > will be useful to someone.  :)  Note that pywin32 is required to
> > interact with Excel 2007, so unfortunately this script will work only
> > on Windows with Excel 2007 installed.

> > This script is to be executed in the directory of XLSX workbooks
> > pending conversion.

> > import glob
> > import os
> > import time
> > import win32com.client

> > xlsx_files = glob.glob('*.xlsx')

> > if len(xlsx_files) == 0:
> >     raise RuntimeError('No XLSX files to convert.')

> > xlApp = win32com.client.Dispatch('Excel.Application')

> > for file in xlsx_files:
> >     xlWb = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), file))
> >     xlWb.SaveAs(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), file.split('.xlsx')[0] +
> > '.xls'), FileFormat=1)

> > xlApp.Quit()

> > # Delete or comment out the following lines if you want to preserve
> > the
> > # original XLSX files.

> > time.sleep(2) # give Excel time to quit, otherwise files may be
> locked
> > for file in xlsx_files:
> >     os.unlink(file)

> Interesting approach.

> For a possibly limited but cross-platform way (i.e. don't need to be
> on Windows or use pywin32) to do the same conversion from .XLSX
> to .XLS files, it is also possible to use an XML parser, such as a SAX-
> capable parser (to read the content (*) of the .XLSX files, and then
> write the same content to .XLS files using, I guess, the Python xlwt
> library, which is mentioned in other messages in this group.). (I have
> not used xlwt (yet), which is why I said "I guess", though I have used
> its counterpart for reading, xlrd, in my xtopdf toolkit.)