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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 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. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive 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 reminder emails and text notifications Fill out online forms Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and 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.

Table of Contents: Introduction Chapter 1 – Python Basics Chapter 2 – Flow Control Chapter 3 – Functions Chapter 4 – Lists Chapter 5 – Dictionaries and Structuring Data Chapter 6 – Manipulating Strings 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 Spreadsheets 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.