Pandas 0.19.2 read_excel IndexError: List index out of range

Question

I am looking to parse an excel spreadsheet. I decided to use pandas but got caught by an error straight off the bat.

I started with the code below but played around with using a full path and also tried setting the sheetname.

import pandas as pd

table = pd.read_excel('ss_12.xlsx')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    pass

The excel spreadsheet is in the same directory as my script file. I taught it would work the same as open() in this sense, just a name required if its in the same directory. I have looked at a few examples online and going by them this should work.

I am trying to strip the first column seen in the image above. The full error (not sure how to format it, sorry)

C:\xx\Playpen\ConfigList_V1_0.xlsx
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\xx\Playpen\getConVars.py", line 12, in <module>
    pd.read_excel(excelFile)
  File "C:\xx\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\excel.py", line 200, in read_excel
    **kwds)
  File "C:\xx\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\excel.py", line 432, in _parse_excel
    sheet = self.book.sheet_by_index(asheetname)
  File "C:\xx\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\xlrd\book.py", line 432, in sheet_by_index
    return self._sheet_list[sheetx] or self.get_sheet(sheetx)
IndexError: list index out of range

Answer 1

Make sure you have the right kind of Excel spreadsheet. I had this same error and realized that I had saved it as a Strict XML Open Spreadsheet which still had the .xlsx extension.