Automating repetitive work tasks with Python — beginner walkthrough
by Rashid Noor·May 23, 2026
I'm not a developer but I've automated 4 hours of my weekly work with Python. Here's what I built and how I learned.
What I automated:
1. A report that pulled data from 3 Excel files, combined them, and generated a formatted summary, was 2 hours of manual work every Monday, now runs in 30 seconds
2. An email digest of specific Outlook folders using win32com, I was manually reviewing and summarising emails, now a script does the first pass
How I learned enough Python to do this:
- Python for Everybody (Coursera), free to audit, covers enough for practical scripting
- ChatGPT for debugging, I described what I was trying to do and had it help fix errors
- Total time to build both scripts: about 3 weekends
Resources specifically useful for Malaysian office automation:
- openpyxl for Excel (common in Malaysian corporate environments)
- pandas for data manipulation
- win32com for Office automation on Windows (most Malaysian offices run Windows)