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Forum Discussion
Embedding an Editable Excel Sheet from Dropbox with Sticky Headers and Indices on a Website
Hi everyone,
I'm looking for a way to embed an Excel sheet (stored on Dropbox) onto my website, with sticky columns and row indices (like in Excel's Freeze Panes feature) that function across all screen sizes. The embedded sheet itself should be editable. Has anyone successfully implemented something like this? Any tips on tools, libraries, or approaches would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
- Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
The closest thing that Dropbox offers to this is the Dropbox Embedder, but while it can display Excel files, it doesn't support the specific features you're looking for. I'll pass these along as feature requests, but I can't promise if or when these might be implemented.
Thank you for your reply Greg-DB
Following up on my previous post, I'm still struggling to embed an editable Excel file stored on Dropbox on our platform. Our goal is to use embedded Excel for daily data collection, then retrieve that data with Python for analysis.
While I can embed the Excel file, it's not editable on our platform, even with edit permissions set on Dropbox. The embedded file displays correctly on desktops but fails on mobile with a "Server IP address could not be found" error.
Opening the file in Excel for the web works using Microsoft Office online, and it's editable there with a Dropbox URL. However, sharing this web version doesn't allow editing on our platform, even when set to "Anyone with the link" can edit. I also tried syncing a Google Sheet to Dropbox, but changes in the Google Sheet aren't reflected in the Dropbox version.
Essentially, I'm searching for a way to embed an editable Excel file from Dropbox on our web platform, aggregate the data through it, and then efficiently retrieve that data with Python. We're currently using Google Sheets and a service account for data management and retrieval, but we experience significant delays. Pulling data from Dropbox using urllib.request has been remarkably faster, so we're eager to find a Dropbox-based solution. Data retrieval and analysis is carried out on our web platform using Python, so this topic is about efficient server-to-server communication.
Google Sheets provide excellent embedding options and data collection through Google Forms but fails on data retrieval efficiency. I'm looking for a similar workflow that is efficient with Dropbox and Excel. Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks
TStack
- Greg-DB
Yes, unfortunately even when using a Dropbox shared link with "edit" permissions, the Dropbox Embedder interface in particular does not support editing. I've passed that along as a feature request but I can't make any promises on that I'm afraid.
As for the "Server IP address could not be found" error, that doesn't sound like an error from Dropbox itself, so I can't offer help with that. You may need to look into your network/server configuration regarding that.
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