Has anybody figured out how to use pywin32 in a virtual environment? - pywin32

Question

People have been trying for years to get pywin32 to work inside a virtual environment, and it seems nobody has succeeded yet. At least, all the unanswered questions about how to do it are swamping the few questions that have received answers. I need to have my Python script use COM to communicate with an ActiveX program, and so I need win32com.client.Dispatch(), and so I need pywin32. I've read that pypiwin32 is the currently favored module, but it depends on pywin32.
I can load pywin32 into my registered copy of Python with no trouble, but I want to be able to use a virtual environment based on the 32-bit version of Python 3.8.
So how do I do it? If I need a 64-bit version of Python, I can switch, but I'd rather not.
Here is what happens when I tried it using a venv based on 64-bit Python 3.8 on my Win10 box:
(venv) C:\misc\venv_test\venv\Scripts>python
Python 3.8.1 (tags/v3.8.1:1b293b6, Dec 18 2019, 23:11:46) [MSC v.1916 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> exit()
(venv) C:\misc\venv_test\venv\Scripts>pip install pywin32
Collecting pywin32
Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pywin32 (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for pywin32
(venv) C:\misc\venv_test\venv\Scripts>pip install c:\misc\pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win32.whl
pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win32.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform.
(venv) C:\misc\venv_test\venv\Scripts>pip install c:\misc\pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl
pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform.
And on a venv based on the 32-bit version of Python 3.8:
(venv) T:\Worthington Steel\Scripts Python3\venv\Scripts>python
Python 3.8.1 (tags/v3.8.1:1b293b6, Dec 18 2019, 22:39:24) [MSC v.1916 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> exit()
(venv) T:\Worthington Steel\Scripts Python3\venv\Scripts>pip install pywin32
Collecting pywin32
Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pywin32 (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for pywin32
(venv) T:\Worthington Steel\Scripts Python3\venv\Scripts>pip install c:\misc\pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win32.whl
pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win32.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform.
(venv) T:\Worthington Steel\Scripts Python3\venv\Scripts>pip install c:\misc\pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl
pywin32-227-cp38-cp38-win_amd64.whl is not a supported wheel on this platform.
(venv) T:\Worthington Steel\Scripts Python3\venv\Scripts>