Open a Workbook with XLWINGS without making it visible

Question

I am starting to use XLWings (not that I like Excel, at all, but it is something I HAVE TO do). The thing is that I cannot find the way to make Python open a Workbook without showing it.

It seems the constructor for Workbooks in the old XLWings 0.6.4 was xlwings.Workbook, and one of the arguments was a flag 'app_visible' (see http://docs.xlwings.org/en/v0.6.4/api.html).

However, in the new v0.9.2 Workbook has been replaced by Book, and Book does not have any such flag (http://docs.xlwings.org/en/stable/api.html). The App object does have it, and I thought that was the way to go. So I coded:

import xlwings as xw

app = xw.App(visible=False)
filename = os.path.join(PATH_EXCEL_SAMPLES, r"rangosConDatos_sample01.xls")
book = xw.Book(filename)
# Do stuff with the info in the book
book.close()  # Ya puedo cerrar el libro.
app.kill()

But, regretably, when

book = xw.Book(filename)

is executed the 'visible' attribute of app suddenly becomes True, and the book is shown. I do not know if this is a desired feature or an unexpected behaviour. Anyway, any ideas how should I do it?

Answer 1

Here is my working code fragment:

    import xlwings

    excel_app = xlwings.App(visible=False)
    excel_book = excel_app.books.open('PATH_TO_YOUR_XLSX_FILE')
    excel_book.save()
    excel_book.close()
    excel_app.quit()