win32com error

[steven laycock]

Hi

I'm looking to get to grips with Python by having a go a translating some Word VBA macros I've written.  However I seem to have fallen at the first obstacle.

I have installed python 3.6.1 32 bit and separately pywin 32 bit on a windows 10 64 bit installation (with Office 2016 64 bit)

I have a very simple script which just opens Word.  But it doesn't work.

Import win32com.client as win32

MSWord=win32.Dispatch("Word.Application")

MSWord.Visible = True

Gives the error

%Debug Wordtest.py

  File "G:\Download\Python\scripts\Wordtest.py", line 1

    Import win32com.client as win32

                  ^

SyntaxError: invalid syntax (where the ^ is actually under the m of com)

Is the answer as simple as using 64 bit versions of python and pywin32

[freeflow]

I solved this problem as follows.

I found the instructions on installing Thonny over an existing python installation

As I had been playing around with python I realised I had a number of python installations.

I removed all python installations and IDE's from my windows (including manually purging directories)

Installed 64 bit version of python 

Installed 63 bit version of pywin32

Installed Thonny over the python installation above

Selected the above python installation as my interpreter.

No problems importing win32com

If there is a way to use win32com using the built in python interpreter please let me know.

 

[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi!

Your original error was caused by "Import" which should have been "import".

I suppose you tried to install pywin32 using the exe-installer. I'm afraid it's not possible to use this for Thonny's built-in virtual environment.
Thonny supports installing PyPI packages using pip (Tools => Manage packages or Tools => Open system shell). Confusingly, the package "pywin32" in PyPI doesn't have any downloads. On the other hand, there's a package called "pypiwin32" which can be installed by pip (see https://code.activestate.com/lists/python-win32/13613/)

Hope this helps!

best regards,
Aivar