Description

copycolumns is a python script to copy selected columns from an Excel spreadsheet to new spreadsheet. The script is intended to be used to make a subset of data available in a new spreadsheet.

Usage

The script takes 3 positional arguments:

1.  The name of a text file containing the header names of the columns to copy.
2. The name of a spreadsheet containing the source data. A header matching the column names in the specified header
   names file should be present within the first 10 rows of the spreadsheet
3. The name of file for the output, this file will be created or overwritten.

The following switches are available to modify the script’s behavior:

-p include a minimal set of predefined PlanArt column names
-d include a minimal set of predefined DoubleTalk column names
-i ignore any column names that are not found in the source data’s header
-t place the output data within an Excel table

Column name file format

The column name file should be a simple text file with one column name per line.

Trailing and leading spaces and blank lines and lines will be ignored.

Any line that contains a hash # as the first character (excluding leading spaces) will be ignored, this can be used for comments or to prevent a column name definition being used.

Columns in the new spreadsheet are created in the order they are defined in the column name text file. If the -p or -d switches are specified then the set of predefined column names are prepended to the list of names.

If you are asked to select a text encoding when saving the text file, select utf-8 if available.

Predefined column names

DoubleTalk_headers

Unnamed: 0, RecNo, File Number, Speaker, Beg, A_Offset_Time, B_Onset_Time,  End

PlanArt_headers

Filename, Speaker, Beg, End, ExperimentID, Use

Typical usage examples:

create a copy of the columns identified in the file column_name_file.txt, the source data is in source_data_file.xlsx, put the columns is a new spreadsheet with name destination_file.xlsx

python copycolumns.py column_name_file.txt source_data_file.xlsx destination_file.xlsx

create a copy of the columns identified in the file column_name_file.txt, include the predefined columns for DoubleTalk data and place the data in an Excel table

python -dt copycolumns.py column_name_file.txt source_data_file.xlsx destination_file.xlsx

Availability

The python source script and a packaged mac version of the script are available in the @ToDo: add link to script once uploaded.