diff --git a/direct/src/showbase/ExcelHandler.py b/direct/src/showbase/ExcelHandler.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..cef1e76452
--- /dev/null
+++ b/direct/src/showbase/ExcelHandler.py
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+"""
+A simple XML parser for Excel XML data. Built on top of xml.sax
+
+Example use:
+e=ExcelHandler()
+parse('myData.xml', e)
+print e.tables
+
+"""
+
+from xml.sax import saxutils
+from xml.sax import parse
+
+class ExcelHandler(saxutils.DefaultHandler):
+    def __init__(self):
+        self.chars=[]
+        self.isNumber = 0
+        self.cells=[]
+        self.rows=[]
+        self.tables=[]
+        
+    def characters(self, content):
+        self.chars.append(content)
+        
+    def startElement(self, name, attrs):
+        if name=="Data":
+            if attrs.get('ss:Type') == "Number":
+                self.isNumber = 1
+            else:
+                self.isNumber = 0
+        elif name=="Cell":
+            self.chars=[]
+        elif name=="Row":
+            self.cells=[]
+        elif name=="Table":
+            self.rows=[]
+            
+    def endElement(self, name):
+        if name=="Data":
+            pass
+        elif name=="Cell":
+            s = ''.join(self.chars)
+            if self.isNumber:
+                # Determine if it is an int or float and use
+                # return the best fit
+                floatVersion = float(s)
+                intVersion = int(floatVersion)
+                if floatVersion == intVersion:
+                    # If the float is equal to the int, it must be an int
+                    s = intVersion
+                else:
+                    # Keep the precision and return a float
+                    s = floatVersion
+            self.cells.append(s)
+        elif name=="Row":
+            self.rows.append(self.cells)
+        elif name=="Table":
+            self.tables.append(self.rows)