---
product_id: 175129757
title: "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners"
price: "580 kr"
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---

# Python 3-powered automation Excel & Google Sheets integration 100,000+ copies sold worldwide Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners

**Price:** 580 kr
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Summary

> 🚀 Code Less, Automate More: Your Shortcut to Productivity Mastery

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners
- **How much does it cost?** 580 kr with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [greenland.desertcart.com](https://greenland.desertcart.com/products/175129757-automate-the-boring-stuff-with-python-2nd-edition-practical-programming)

## Best For

- Customers looking for quality international products

## Why This Product

- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
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## Key Features

- • **Master Real-World Tools:** Learn to manipulate files, scrape websites, handle PDFs, and automate emails effortlessly.
- • **Challenge Yourself & Grow:** End-of-chapter projects push you from basics to intermediate skills with hands-on coding.
- • **Stay Ahead with Updated Content:** Includes new chapters on input validation, Gmail automation, and Google Sheets integration.
- • **Automate Tedious Tasks in Minutes:** Transform hours of manual work into minutes with practical Python scripts.
- • **No Experience Needed, Just Curiosity:** Designed for total beginners—no coding background required to start automating.

## Overview

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition, is a best-selling beginner-friendly programming book that teaches practical Python 3 automation skills. With over 100,000 copies sold, it empowers professionals and hobbyists alike to save hours by automating repetitive tasks like file management, web scraping, spreadsheet updates, and email handling. Featuring updated content, real-world projects, and no prior coding experience required, this book is the ultimate toolkit for anyone looking to boost productivity and master essential programming skills.

## Description

The second edition of this best-selling Python book (100,000+ copies sold in print alone) uses Python 3 to teach even the technically uninclined how to write programs that do in minutes what would take hours to do by hand. There is no prior programming experience required and the book is loved by liberal arts majors and geeks alike. If you've ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? In this fully revised second edition of the best-selling classic Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand--no prior programming experience required. You'll learn the basics Python and explore Python's rich library of modules for performing specific tasks, like scraping data off websites, reading PDF and Word documents, and automating clicking and typing tasks. The second edition of this international fan favorite includes a brand-new chapter on input validation, as well as tutorials on automating Gmail and Google Sheets, plus tips on automatically updating CSV files. You'll learn how to create programs that effortlessly perform useful feats of automation to: - Search for text in a file or across multiple files - Create, update, move, and rename files and folders - Search the Web and download online content - Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size - Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs - Send email responses and text notifications - Fill out online forms Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and updated practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks. Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition .

Review: Awesome book for moving from basic to intermediate Python skills - Positive Python Logo Automate the boring stuff Automate The Boring Stuff With Python : Practical Programming for Total Beginners Sean Massey 5 Feb 2023 Automate the boring stuff Categories: Book Review, Foundation, Intermediate, Skills If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? In this fully revised second edition of the best-selling classic Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand—no prior programming experience required.… I’ve just finished the final challenge of the final chapter of Al Sweigart’s awesome Automate the Boring Stuff With Python. It has been an immensity enjoyable journey through Python’s basic and intermediate programming skills and I have learnt a great deal about how I will build my applications in Python. It covers the basics very quickly, Al is really upfront about this though and from my point of view it meant I could brush up some core skills before diving into what feels like some pretty advanced stuff really quickly. Each chapter follows a really clear structure; basic principals, example code typed into IDLE, build a sample project in your editor that Al provides, review, questions about the chapter, Al offers some challenges for you to do yourself. These are done in the style of the technical challenge on The great British Bake Off, by which I mean he offers a description of what app you need to bake, with some essential ingredients you should be using, but leaving plenty of space for you to bake your code, your way. Everything you need is in the book so you will never get lost. As the books travels through the chapters, some of these example projects combine skills learnt previously and really opened my eyes to the power that can quickly created by the combination of great foundational Python skills and the libraries available to me. Al’s writing style is conversational and direct, which I found very easy to follow and if you also follow him on Twitter you will see reflects his free-spirited Twitter personality. I’d love to meet him one day to see if it matches his actual personality…I’ll bet it does. A couple of things to think about while you are using this book; 1. Al (quite deliberately) does not use full PEP8 styling in his code. For me this was not a problem at all, if anything it enhances the accessibility of the book. I found I used his styling when entering code into REPL, but when coding in the IDE I ‘translated’ to PEP8 as this helped me reinforce those skills for myself and also forced me to really understand how the projects work, which helped me when I wrote my own. 2. There have been some changes to APIs and Libraries since the book was published, however the book’s website helps you through this and also has all the download files you need to complete the project, a feature I don’t see in many other books aimed at the same market. 3. You will need to learn a bit about how your operating system manages paths/folders/files which can be a little esoteric. However, Al provides great guidance on this topic and for me this is an essential skill for any Python coder. 4. At first the end of chapter challenges feel a little daunting….believe me if you complete them all (and all the knowledge you need is in the book) then you will improve your understanding of you will build your own applications more quickly then you can imagine! The areas covered in the book are; Part I: Python Programming Basics Chapter 1: Python Basics Chapter 2: Flow Control Chapter 3: Functions Chapter 4: Lists Chapter 5: Dictionaries and Structuring Data Chapter 6: Manipulating Strings Part II: Automating Tasks Chapter 7: Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions Chapter 8: Input Validation Chapter 9: Reading and Writing Files Chapter 10: Organizing Files Chapter 11: Debugging Chapter 12: Web Scraping Chapter 13: Working with Excel Spreadsheets Chapter 14: Working with Google Sheets Chapter 15: Working with PDF and Word Documents Chapter 16: Working with CSV Files and JSON Data Chapter 17: Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs Chapter 18: Sending Email and Text Messages Chapter 19: Manipulating Images Chapter 20: Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation Appendix A: Installing Third-Party Modules Appendix B: Running Programs Appendix C: Answers to the Practice Questions By the end of this book I could manage files, scrape websites, send SMS’s from Python, look for patterns in massive data sets, manage image files and much more. Thanks Al, I am ready to build my own apps now!
Review: brilliantly written book that got me back into programming - I bought this because it seemed an easy re-entry into programming, and in particular I wanted to wrangle some data in a way that's beyond excel, whilst using excel as both data source and output mechanism. I'm a lapsed programmer, so was coming to the party with some previous, and the straightforward approach the author takes was just spot-on, dealing with just enough coding and plenty of realistic examples to whet your appetite and give you something to develop and grow with. The basics are covered first - just enough to get you going, don't expect a full reference here - then specific topics are worked through such as automating OS-type file/ folder work, then progressing on to dealing with pdf, JSON, CSV, excel (and in this latest version, Google sheets), docx etc files, which gives you a great grounding into the book's overarching aim - automating those trivial everyday repetitive tasks that take up so much time and are generally error-prone. I've now got upwards of 50 short scripts that automate all sorts of work-workload, from wrangling 5,000-record datasets down to monitoring a server folder for excess files (large backups that tend not to get rotated.) On top of re-awakening my interest (and ability!) in programming, I'd estimate this book saves me a good 5 hours a week at work, all boring drudge work. For that alone it's worth the purchase price. Currently my most-used script scrapes a booking website for Covid-19 vaccinations (I manage a small doctors' practice), pulls multiple clinics into 1 spreadsheet and outputs a mail-merge file that prints out card labels with name/ DOB/ NHS number/ clinic date & time. I run it every day at the moment and it saves me 30 minutes a day, minimum. More if we have late-changes- so the book is also helping in the fight against Covid! If you haven't guessed already, I'm a fan. If you have the slightest interest in Python, in learning programming in a practical, useful way, or work a lot at a computer and want to save yourself from boring, repetitive work, do yourself a favour and buy this book. If you don't save the purchase price in time savings within a week, you haven't read it properly.

## Features

- Language: english
- Book - automate the boring stuff with python, 2nd edition: practical programming for total beginners
- It is made up of premium quality material.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | 119,554 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 54 in General Introduction to Programming 63 in Programming Languages & Tools 132 in Introduction to Programming |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 3,415 Reviews |

## Images

![Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71uEI89mcpL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Awesome book for moving from basic to intermediate Python skills
*by S***N on 5 February 2023*

Positive Python Logo Automate the boring stuff Automate The Boring Stuff With Python : Practical Programming for Total Beginners Sean Massey 5 Feb 2023 Automate the boring stuff Categories: Book Review, Foundation, Intermediate, Skills If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? In this fully revised second edition of the best-selling classic Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand—no prior programming experience required.… I’ve just finished the final challenge of the final chapter of Al Sweigart’s awesome Automate the Boring Stuff With Python. It has been an immensity enjoyable journey through Python’s basic and intermediate programming skills and I have learnt a great deal about how I will build my applications in Python. It covers the basics very quickly, Al is really upfront about this though and from my point of view it meant I could brush up some core skills before diving into what feels like some pretty advanced stuff really quickly. Each chapter follows a really clear structure; basic principals, example code typed into IDLE, build a sample project in your editor that Al provides, review, questions about the chapter, Al offers some challenges for you to do yourself. These are done in the style of the technical challenge on The great British Bake Off, by which I mean he offers a description of what app you need to bake, with some essential ingredients you should be using, but leaving plenty of space for you to bake your code, your way. Everything you need is in the book so you will never get lost. As the books travels through the chapters, some of these example projects combine skills learnt previously and really opened my eyes to the power that can quickly created by the combination of great foundational Python skills and the libraries available to me. Al’s writing style is conversational and direct, which I found very easy to follow and if you also follow him on Twitter you will see reflects his free-spirited Twitter personality. I’d love to meet him one day to see if it matches his actual personality…I’ll bet it does. A couple of things to think about while you are using this book; 1. Al (quite deliberately) does not use full PEP8 styling in his code. For me this was not a problem at all, if anything it enhances the accessibility of the book. I found I used his styling when entering code into REPL, but when coding in the IDE I ‘translated’ to PEP8 as this helped me reinforce those skills for myself and also forced me to really understand how the projects work, which helped me when I wrote my own. 2. There have been some changes to APIs and Libraries since the book was published, however the book’s website helps you through this and also has all the download files you need to complete the project, a feature I don’t see in many other books aimed at the same market. 3. You will need to learn a bit about how your operating system manages paths/folders/files which can be a little esoteric. However, Al provides great guidance on this topic and for me this is an essential skill for any Python coder. 4. At first the end of chapter challenges feel a little daunting….believe me if you complete them all (and all the knowledge you need is in the book) then you will improve your understanding of you will build your own applications more quickly then you can imagine! The areas covered in the book are; Part I: Python Programming Basics Chapter 1: Python Basics Chapter 2: Flow Control Chapter 3: Functions Chapter 4: Lists Chapter 5: Dictionaries and Structuring Data Chapter 6: Manipulating Strings Part II: Automating Tasks Chapter 7: Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions Chapter 8: Input Validation Chapter 9: Reading and Writing Files Chapter 10: Organizing Files Chapter 11: Debugging Chapter 12: Web Scraping Chapter 13: Working with Excel Spreadsheets Chapter 14: Working with Google Sheets Chapter 15: Working with PDF and Word Documents Chapter 16: Working with CSV Files and JSON Data Chapter 17: Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs Chapter 18: Sending Email and Text Messages Chapter 19: Manipulating Images Chapter 20: Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation Appendix A: Installing Third-Party Modules Appendix B: Running Programs Appendix C: Answers to the Practice Questions By the end of this book I could manage files, scrape websites, send SMS’s from Python, look for patterns in massive data sets, manage image files and much more. Thanks Al, I am ready to build my own apps now!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ brilliantly written book that got me back into programming
*by W***Y on 24 March 2021*

I bought this because it seemed an easy re-entry into programming, and in particular I wanted to wrangle some data in a way that's beyond excel, whilst using excel as both data source and output mechanism. I'm a lapsed programmer, so was coming to the party with some previous, and the straightforward approach the author takes was just spot-on, dealing with just enough coding and plenty of realistic examples to whet your appetite and give you something to develop and grow with. The basics are covered first - just enough to get you going, don't expect a full reference here - then specific topics are worked through such as automating OS-type file/ folder work, then progressing on to dealing with pdf, JSON, CSV, excel (and in this latest version, Google sheets), docx etc files, which gives you a great grounding into the book's overarching aim - automating those trivial everyday repetitive tasks that take up so much time and are generally error-prone. I've now got upwards of 50 short scripts that automate all sorts of work-workload, from wrangling 5,000-record datasets down to monitoring a server folder for excess files (large backups that tend not to get rotated.) On top of re-awakening my interest (and ability!) in programming, I'd estimate this book saves me a good 5 hours a week at work, all boring drudge work. For that alone it's worth the purchase price. Currently my most-used script scrapes a booking website for Covid-19 vaccinations (I manage a small doctors' practice), pulls multiple clinics into 1 spreadsheet and outputs a mail-merge file that prints out card labels with name/ DOB/ NHS number/ clinic date & time. I run it every day at the moment and it saves me 30 minutes a day, minimum. More if we have late-changes- so the book is also helping in the fight against Covid! If you haven't guessed already, I'm a fan. If you have the slightest interest in Python, in learning programming in a practical, useful way, or work a lot at a computer and want to save yourself from boring, repetitive work, do yourself a favour and buy this book. If you don't save the purchase price in time savings within a week, you haven't read it properly.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nice resource that comes in handy often!
*by C***T on 24 September 2025*

This is an eclectic collection of different things you can automate with Python. Really nice resource: I have used code snippets from various chapters many times over the last year or so. The edition I have does have some outdated packages, but nothing a quick consultation with the documentation won't fix!

## Frequently Bought Together

- Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition: Practical Programming for Total Beginners
- Python Crash Course, 3rd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
- Python Programming Language QuickStudy Laminated Reference Guide

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*Last updated: 2026-10-18*