Python：Pandas read_excel 无法打开.xls 文件，不支持 xlrd

Question

Problem:

I am opening a.xls with pd.read_excel, but I got an error.

df_cima = pd.read_excel("docs/Presentaciones.xls")

xlrd.biffh.XLRDError: Excel xlsx file; not supported

The suffix of this file is.xls but this error tells me that it is.xlsx

Then I tried to add engine="openpyxl" , which is usually used for reading the.xlsx when xlrd version is no longer 1.2.0, then it gives me another error

openpyxl.utils.exceptions.InvalidFileException: openpyxl does not support the old .xls file format, please use xlrd to read this file, or convert it to the more recent .xlsx file format.

MY env:

• pandas version: 1.1.5
• xlrd version: 2.0.1
• openpyxl version: 3.0.6

I do not want to change my xlrd version back to 1.2.0 , from other answer I see that new version of xlrd support only.xls, but I don't understand why it is not working for my file.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Your file is not a.xls, I insist: :)

With Pandas 1.1.5 and xlrd 2.1.0

Rename Presentaciones.xls to Presentaciones.xlsx .

import pandas as pd
# Use openpyxl.
df = pd.read_excel(r'X:...\Presentaciones.xlsx', engine='openpyxl')
print(df)

Enjoy: :)

More info

How do I know that your file is a fake .xls and a very real .xlsx ? Because openpyxl doesn't work with xls files.

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_excel(r'X:...\test.xls', engine='openpyxl')
/* 
   ERROR:
   InvalidFileException: openpyxl does not support the old .xls file format, 
   please use xlrd to read this file, or convert it to the more recent .xlsx file format.
*/

And trying to simply rename test.xls to test.xlsx does not work either!

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_excel(r'X:...\test.xlsx', engine='openpyxl')
/*
    Error:
    OSError: File contains no valid workbook part
*/

History

Beware, the .xlsx extension (detected by pandas) means there may be scripts in this file. Sometimes the extension can lie, so be careful !

The reason why panda stopped supporting xlsx files is that those files are a security hazard and no one was maintaining this part of the code.