I've tried both

from xlutils.copy import copy
from xlutils import copy

both works. It seems your python lib is not in your lib path. try the following code:

import sys
print (sys.path)

and check if your lib path is there. if not add the lib path using:

sys.path.append('/your-lib-path')

in python code, or add the lib path to your environment variable PYTHONPATH

You can install from pypi using pip:

pip install --user xlutils

http://pythonhosted.org/xlutils/installation.html

If pip.exe is not in your PATH use the full path to to pip.exe or replace pip with python -m pip

Perhaps you have multiple installations of Python, and the pip installed the xlutils in a different installation. If you try just:

import xlutils

I expect you'll get the same results as before. I feel this may be getting overlooked by some of the other posters. Your error message says it can't find the xlutils module, not some submodule or variable. Is this still the case?

When you have multiple installations of Python, only one is the "default", so to speak, and any module installations will install into that default Python installation. I am careful to only run two installations: Python 2.7 and 3.6. And I go into each installation and make sure that I have a pip2 and a python2, and a pip3 and python3, so that I can just reference directly to the Py version I want to use, either to run or to install new packages. Otherwise, if I just run pip, I'm not 1000% sure where it will go. (Okay, I'm exaggerating. I know Python 2 is my default. Just trying to make a point.) :)

Also, just because you think you only have one Python installation, that may not be the case. On Windows, yes. But on Mac, there is a preloaded Python installation, and updating the Python and getting new packages into the new version instead of the preloaded version can be tricky, depending on what you've done. Also, when you install an IDE like PyCharm, it wants to install a Python version, as well.

Last comment -- Sometimes (not usually but sometimes), an installed package will have a different name than you would think. That is not the case with xlutils. But, with fonttools, you install fonttools but you must import fontTools (note the capital 'T') into your Py script. Again, not the case with xlutils, but just be aware of this for the future.

There are two parts to this.

First, you must enable the reading of formatting info when opening the source workbook. The copy operation will then copy the formatting over.

import xlrd
import xlutils.copy

inBook = xlrd.open_workbook('input.xls', formatting_info=True)
outBook = xlutils.copy.copy(inBook)

Secondly, you must deal with the fact that changing a cell value resets the formatting of that cell.

This is less pretty; I use the following hack where I manually copy the formatting index (xf_idx) over:

def _getOutCell(outSheet, colIndex, rowIndex):
    """ HACK: Extract the internal xlwt cell representation. """
    row = outSheet._Worksheet__rows.get(rowIndex)
    if not row: return None

    cell = row._Row__cells.get(colIndex)
    return cell

def setOutCell(outSheet, col, row, value):
    """ Change cell value without changing formatting. """
    # HACK to retain cell style.
    previousCell = _getOutCell(outSheet, col, row)
    # END HACK, PART I

    outSheet.write(row, col, value)

    # HACK, PART II
    if previousCell:
        newCell = _getOutCell(outSheet, col, row)
        if newCell:
            newCell.xf_idx = previousCell.xf_idx
    # END HACK

outSheet = outBook.get_sheet(0)
setOutCell(outSheet, 5, 5, 'Test')
outBook.save('output.xls')

This preserves almost all formatting. Cell comments are not copied, though.

xlrd, xlwt, and xlutils are for accessing xls files, and have not been updated for use with xlsx files, which results in your multiple errors.

As a workaround, there is now a Python library openpyxlwhich can easily read and write Excel xlsx/xlsm/xltx/xltm files.