Question: Is there any way to avoid the file to be opened while working with **xlwings**?

I have read there was an update going on one year ago but I do not know if the issue has been solved.

Answer: 
As of version 0.10.4, xlwings is purely manipulating Excel files via a running Excel instance. That means, yes, you need to have your file open.
You can set the Excel instance to `visible=False`, see [here](http://docs.xlwings.org/en/stable/api.html#app), but I doubt that this is what you want. To manipulate the files directly without Excel, you have to use xlrd/xlwt or xlsxwriter or openpyxl.
According with [Felix Zumstein](https://stackoverflow.com/a/42816022/8275210), the solution lies in that documentation. Also I had this problem and I solved with the following line of code:

```
import xlwings
xlwings.App().visible = False

```

Personally, before I had other problems, even wider! And thanks to this solution I solved them.