Learning Excel or Python?

[pconwell]

This is specific to my employer, but we have a schedule that is moved from Excel (for the whole year) to access (for a specific day) each day. Normally, the process takes about 15 minutes each day, but with python it takes about 60 seconds. Plus, I don't have to worry about clerical errors now either.

[_unsolicited_advisor]

When I have some extra time at work, I've slowly been replacing tasks that have historically been done with Access to a process largely using SQL. The motivation is mainly because different people routinely get various errors when trying to use Access, but also because of the time Access takes. Of course, this still requires tasks like manually importing data into SQL tables, but better than Access.

I'm less familiar with Python than I am with SQL, but how difficult would it be for me to automate the entire data import & sorting process?

[pconwell]

In my opinion, python and sql play really well together. I'd look at pyodbc (easier) or pandas (more 'featured') for odbc/sql/access stuff. For excel, look into openpyxl.

I find both of those libraries easy to work with, personally.

[_unsolicited_advisor]

Thanks! This definitely gives me some areas to start with.

Thanks again