Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

By Al Sweigart. Over 500,000 copies sold. Free to read under a Creative Commons license.

“The best part of programming is the triumph of seeing the machine do something useful. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python frames all of programming as these small triumphs; it makes the boring fun.”

-Hilary Mason, Data Scientist and Founder of Fast Forward Labs

“I'm having a lot of fun breaking things and then putting them back together, and just remembering the joy of turning a set of instructions into something useful and fun, like I did when I was a kid.”

-Wil Wheaton, WilWheaton.net

“If you are new to Python, get this book. ... If you lie in the category of experienced Pythonistas and haven’t read this book, you should also take out some time and read it.”

-The Startup

“Valuable to have on your shelf...an extremely useful book.”

—Kids, Code, and Computer Science Magazine

"One of the best books for learning Python."

—Giles McMullen-Klein, FlickThrough Reviews

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 this work for you?

In this fully revised third edition of 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. Early chapters will teach you the fundamentals of Python through clear explanations and engaging examples. You’ll write your first Python program; work with strings, lists, dictionaries, and other data structures; then use regular expressions to find and manipulate text patterns.

Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll tackle projects that teach you to use Python to automate tasks like:

  • Searching the web, downloading content, and filling out forms
  • Finding, extracting, and manipulating text and data in files and spreadsheets
  • Copying, moving, renaming, or compressing saved files on your computer
  • Splitting, merging, and extracting text from PDFs and Word documents
  • Interacting with applications through custom mouse and keyboard macros
  • Managing your inbox, unsubscribing from lists, and sending email or text notifications

Recent News

June 19, 2025: I've redesigned this website and inventwithpython.com, the site that hosts my other programming books. Now that the site is cleaner and easier to update, I'll be posting more to the blog.

The last blog posts I made were over a year ago, on using the Fabric.js JavaScript library for HTML canvas drawing.

Online Video Course

This video course follows much (though not all) of the content of the 1st edition of the book. Use this link to apply a 70% discount code. You can preview the first 15 course videos for free on YouTube.

Table of Contents

(The 1st edition and 2nd edition are still available.)

Additional Content

Download the files used in this book.

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About the Author

Al Sweigart is a software developer, author of several programming books, and a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation. He is the author of several programming books for beginners, including Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, The Big Book of Small Python Projects, and Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python (all from No Starch Press). He is an international speaker at several PyCon conferences. His website is https://inventwithpython.com.

Reports that Al is an AI have been grossly exaggerated.