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# Getting Started with XlsxWriter

Here are some easy instructions to get you up and running with the XlsxWriter module.

## Installing XlsxWriter

The first step is to install the XlsxWriter module. There are several ways to do this.

### Using PIP

The pip installer is the preferred method for installing Python modules from PyPI, the Python Package Index:

    $ sudo pip install XlsxWriter

Note

Windows users can omit `sudo` at the start of the command.

### Installing from a tarball

If you download a tarball of the latest version of XlsxWriter you can install it as follows (change the version number to suit):

    $ tar -zxvf XlsxWriter-1.2.3.tar.gz

    $ cd XlsxWriter-1.2.3
    $ sudo python setup.py install

A tarball of the latest code can be downloaded from GitHub as follows:

    $ curl -O -L http://github.com/jmcnamara/XlsxWriter/archive/master.tar.gz

    $ tar zxvf master.tar.gz
    $ cd XlsxWriter-master/
    $ sudo python setup.py install

### Cloning from GitHub

The XlsxWriter source code and bug tracker is in the XlsxWriter repository on GitHub. You can clone the repository and install from it as follows:

    $ git clone https://github.com/jmcnamara/XlsxWriter.git

    $ cd XlsxWriter
    $ sudo python setup.py install

## Running a sample program

If the installation went correctly you can create a small sample program like the following to verify that the module works correctly:

    import xlsxwriter

    workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook('hello.xlsx')
    worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()

    worksheet.write('A1', 'Hello world')

    workbook.close()

Save this to a file called `hello.py` and run it as follows:

    $ python hello.py

This will output a file called `hello.xlsx` which should look something like the following:

If you downloaded a tarball or cloned the repo, as shown above, you should also have a directory called examples with some sample applications that demonstrate different features of XlsxWriter.

# Documentation

The full version of XlsxWriter documentation is hosted on Read The Docs. It is also available as a PDF.