"Must explicitly set engine if not passing in buffer or path for io" in Panda

Question

When running the following Python Panda code:

    xl          = pd.ExcelFile(dataFileUrl)
    sheets      = xl.sheet_names
    data        = xl.parse(sheets[0])
    colheaders  = list(data)

I receive the ValueError:

Must explicitly set engine if not passing in buffer or path for io

The file is for sure an excel file, no doubt about that.

What is happening?

Answer 1

I would try

xl = pd.ExcelFile(dataFileUrl, engine='xlrd')

Answer 2

I had this same problem and it was because the code that generated dataFileUrl produced a list with only one element in it. Changing to dataFileUrl[0] fixed the problem.