How can I open an Excel file in Python?

Question

How do I open a file that is an Excel file for reading in Python?

I've opened text files, for example, sometextfile.txt with the reading command. How do I do that for an Excel file?

Answer 1

Edit:
In the newer version of pandas, you can pass the sheet name as a parameter.

file_name =  # path to file + file name sheet =  # sheet name or sheet number or list of sheet numbers and names  import pandas as pd df = pd.read_excel(io=file_name, sheet_name=sheet) print(df.head(5))  # print first 5 rows of the dataframe 

Check the docs for examples on how to pass sheet_name:
https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/generated/pandas.read_excel.html

Old version:
you can use pandas package as well....

When you are working with an excel file with multiple sheets, you can use:

import pandas as pd xl = pd.ExcelFile(path + filename) xl.sheet_names  >>> [u'Sheet1', u'Sheet2', u'Sheet3']  df = xl.parse("Sheet1") df.head() 

df.head() will print first 5 rows of your Excel file

If you're working with an Excel file with a single sheet, you can simply use:

import pandas as pd df = pd.read_excel(path + filename) print df.head()