Python excel read all sheets

Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful spreadsheet software applications in the world, and it has become critical in all business processes. Companies across the world, both big and small, are using Microsoft Excel to store, organize, analyze, and visualize data.

As a data professional, when you combine Python with Excel, you create a unique data analysis bundle that unlocks the value of the enterprise data.

In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to read and work with Excel files in Python.

After you finish this tutorial, you’ll understand the following:

• Loading Excel spreadsheets into pandas DataFrames
• Working with an Excel workbook with multiple spreadsheets
• Combining multiple spreadsheets
• Reading Excel files using the xlrd package

In this tutorial, we assume you know the fundamentals of pandas DataFrames. If you aren’t familiar with the pandas library, you might like to try our Pandas and NumPy Fundamentals – Dataquest.

Let’s dive in.

Reading Spreadsheets with Pandas

Technically, multiple packages allow us to work with Excel files in Python. However, in this tutorial, we’ll use pandas and xlrd libraries to interact with Excel workbooks. Essentially, you can think of a pandas DataFrame as a spreadsheet with rows and columns stored in Series objects. Traversability of Series as iterable objects allows us to grab specific data easily. Once we load an Excel workbook into a pandas DataFrame, we can perform any kind of data analysis on the data.

Before we proceed to the next step, let’s first download the following spreadsheet:

Sales Data Excel Workbook — xlsx ver.

The Excel workbook consists of two sheets that contain stationery sales data for 2020 and 2021.

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NOTE

Although Excel spreadsheets can contain formula and also support formatting, pandas only imports Excel spreadsheets as flat files, and it doesn’t support spreadsheet formatting.

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To import the Excel spreadsheet into a pandas DataFrame, first, we need to import the pandas package and then use the read_excel() method:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx')

display(df)

If you want to load only a limited number of rows into the DataFrame, you can specify the number of rows using the nrows argument:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', nrows=5)
display(df)

Skipping a specific number of rows from the begining of a spreadsheet or skipping over a list of particular rows is available through the skiprows argument, as follows:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', skiprows=range(5))
display(df)

The code above skips the first five rows and returns the rest of the data. Instead, the following code returns all the rows except for those with the mentioned indices:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', skiprows=[1, 4,7,10])
display(df)

Another useful argument is usecols, which allows us to select spreadsheet columns with their letters, names, or positional numbers. Let’s see how it works:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', usecols='A:C,G')
display(df)

In the code above, the string assigned to the usecols argument contains a range of columns with : plus column G separated by a comma. Also, we’re able to provide a list of column names and assign it to the usecols argument, as follows:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', usecols=['OrderDate', 'Region', 'Rep', 'Total'])
display(df)

The usecols argument accepts a list of column numbers, too. The following code shows how we can pick up specific columns using their indices:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', usecols=[0, 1, 2, 6])
display(df)

Working with Multiple Spreadsheets

Excel files or workbooks usually contain more than one spreadsheet. The pandas library allows us to load data from a specific sheet or combine multiple spreadsheets into a single DataFrame. In this section, we’ll explore how to use these valuable capabilities.

By default, the read_excel() method reads the first Excel sheet with the index 0. However, we can choose the other sheets by assigning a particular sheet name, sheet index, or even a list of sheet names or indices to the sheet_name argument. Let’s try it:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', sheet_name='2021')
display(df)

The code above reads the second spreadsheet in the workbook, whose name is 2021. As mentioned before, we also can assign a sheet position number (zero-indexed) to the sheet_name argument. Let’s see how it works:

df = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', sheet_name=1)
display(df)

As you can see, both statements take in either the actual sheet name or sheet index to return the same result.

Sometimes, we want to import all the spreadsheets stored in an Excel file into pandas DataFrames simultaneously. The good news is that the read_excel() method provides this feature for us. In order to do this, we can assign a list of sheet names or their indices to the sheet_name argument. But there is a much easier way to do the same: to assign None to the sheet_name argument. Let’s try it:

all_sheets = pd.read_excel('sales_data.xlsx', sheet_name=None)

Before exploring the data stored in the all_sheets variable, let’s check its data type:

type(all_sheets)

dict

As you can see, the variable is a dictionary. Now, let’s reveal what is stored in this dictionary:

for key, value in all_sheets.items():
    print(key, type(value))

2020 <class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
2021 <class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>

The code above shows that the dictionary’s keys are the Excel workbook sheet names, and its values are pandas DataFrames for each spreadsheet. To print out the content of the dictionary, we can use the following code:

for key, value in all_sheets.items():
    print(key)
    display(value)

2020

2021

Combining Multiple Excel Spreadsheets into a Single Pandas DataFrame

Having one DataFrame per sheet allows us to have different columns or content in different sheets.

But what if we prefer to store all the spreadsheets’ data in a single DataFrame? In this tutorial, the workbook spreadsheets have the same columns, so we can combine them with the concat() method of pandas.

If you run the code below, you’ll see that the two DataFrames stored in the dictionary are concatenated:

combined_df = pd.concat(all_sheets.values(), ignore_index=True)
display(combined_df)

Now the data stored in the combined_df DataFrame is ready for further processing or visualization. In the following piece of code, we’re going to create a simple bar chart that shows the total sales amount made by each representative. Let’s run it and see the output plot:

total_sales_amount = combined_df.groupby('Rep').Total.sum()
total_sales_amount.plot.bar(figsize=(10, 6))

Reading Excel Files Using xlrd

Although importing data into a pandas DataFrame is much more common, another helpful package for reading Excel files in Python is xlrd. In this section, we’re going to scratch the surface of how to read Excel spreadsheets using this package.

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NOTE

The xlrd package doesn’t support xlsx files due to a potential security vulnerability. So, we use the xls version of the sales data. You can download the xls version from the link below:
Sales Data Excel Workbook — xls ver.

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Let’s see how it works:

import xlrd
excel_workbook = xlrd.open_workbook('sales_data.xls')

Above, the first line imports the xlrd package, then the open_workbook method reads the sales_data.xls file.

We can also open an individual sheet containing the actual data. There are two ways to do so: opening a sheet by index or by name. Let’s open the first sheet by index and the second one by name:

excel_worksheet_2020 = excel_workbook.sheet_by_index(0)
excel_worksheet_2021 = excel_workbook.sheet_by_name('2021')

Now, let’s see how we can print a cell value. The xlrd package provides a method called cell_value() that takes in two arguments: the cell’s row index and column index. Let’s explore it:

print(excel_worksheet_2020.cell_value(1, 3))

Pencil

We can see that the cell_value function returned the value of the cell at row index 1 (the 2nd row) and column index 3 (the 4th column).

The xlrd package provides two helpful properties: nrows and ncols, returning the number of nonempty spreadsheet’s rows and columns respectively:

print('Columns#:', excel_worksheet_2020.ncols)
print('Rows#:', excel_worksheet_2020.nrows)

Columns#: 8
Rows#: 13

Knowing the number of nonempty rows and columns in a spreadsheet helps us with iterating over the data using nested for loops. This makes all the Excel sheet data accessible via the cell_value() method.

Conclusion

This tutorial discussed how to load Excel spreadsheets into pandas DataFrames, work with multiple Excel sheets, and combine them into a single pandas DataFrame. We also explored the main aspects of the xlrd package as one of the simplest tools for accessing the Excel spreadsheets data.

There are various options depending on the use case:

1. If one doesn’t know the sheets names.

2. If the sheets name is not relevant.

3. If one knows the name of the sheets.

Below we will look closely at each of the options.

See the Notes section for information such as finding out the sheet names.

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Option 1

If one doesn’t know the sheets names

# Read all sheets in your File
df = pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name=None)
    
# Prints all the sheets name in an ordered dictionary
print(df.keys())

Then, depending on the sheet one wants to read, one can pass each of them to a specific dataframe, such as

sheet1_df = pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name=SHEET1NAME)
sheet2_df = pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name=SHEET2NAME)

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Option 2

If the name is not relevant and all one cares about is the position of the sheet. Let’s say one wants only the first sheet

# Read all sheets in your File
df = pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name=None)

sheet1 = list(df.keys())[0]

Then, depending on the sheet name, one can pass each it to a specific dataframe, such as

sheet1_df = pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name=SHEET1NAME)

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Option 3

Here we will consider the case where one knows the name of the sheets.
For the examples, one will consider that there are three sheets named Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. The content in each is the same, and looks like this

     0         1     2
0   85   January  2000
1   95  February  2001
2  105     March  2002
3  115     April  2003
4  125       May  2004
5  135      June  2005

With this, depending on one’s goals, there are multiple approaches:

• Store everything in same dataframe. One approach would be to concat the sheets as follows

  sheets = ['Sheet1', 'Sheet2', 'Sheet3']
  df = pd.concat([pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name = sheet) for sheet in sheets], ignore_index = True)
  
  [Out]:
  
        0         1     2
  0    85   January  2000
  1    95  February  2001
  2   105     March  2002
  3   115     April  2003
  4   125       May  2004
  5   135      June  2005
  6    85   January  2000
  7    95  February  2001
  8   105     March  2002
  9   115     April  2003
  10  125       May  2004
  11  135      June  2005
  12   85   January  2000
  13   95  February  2001
  14  105     March  2002
  15  115     April  2003
  16  125       May  2004
  17  135      June  2005
  

  Basically, this how pandas.concat works (Source):

  

• Store each sheet in a different dataframe (let’s say, df1, df2, …)

  sheets = ['Sheet1', 'Sheet2', 'Sheet3']
  
  for i, sheet in enumerate(sheets):
      globals()['df' + str(i + 1)] = pd.read_excel('FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name = sheet)
  
  [Out]:
  
  # df1
       0         1     2
  0   85   January  2000
  1   95  February  2001
  2  105     March  2002
  3  115     April  2003
  4  125       May  2004
  5  135      June  2005
  
  # df2
       0         1     2
  0   85   January  2000
  1   95  February  2001
  2  105     March  2002
  3  115     April  2003
  4  125       May  2004
  5  135      June  2005
  
  # df3
       0         1     2
  0   85   January  2000
  1   95  February  2001
  2  105     March  2002
  3  115     April  2003
  4  125       May  2004
  5  135      June  2005
  

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Notes:

• If one wants to know the sheets names, one can use the ExcelFile class as follows

  sheets = pd.ExcelFile('FILENAME.xlsx').sheet_names
  
  [Out]: ['Sheet1', 'Sheet2', 'Sheet3']
  

• In this case one is assuming that the file FILENAME.xlsx is on the same directory as the script one is running.

  • If the file is in a folder of the current directory called Data, one way would be to use r'./Data/FILENAME.xlsx' create a variable, such as path as follows

     path = r'./Data/Test.xlsx'
    
     df = pd.read_excel(r'./Data/FILENAME.xlsx', sheet_name=None)
    

• This might be a relevant read.

Last updated on 
Jul 18, 2021

In this post you can learn how to read Excel files (ext xls, xlsx etc) with Python and Pandas. We will import one or several sheets from an Excel file to a Pandas DataFrame.

The list of the supported file extensions:

• xls
• xlsx
• xlsm
• xlsb
• odf
• ods
• odt

Note for ods, ods and odt please check: Read Excel(OpenDocument ODS) with Python Pandas

Step 1: Install Pandas and odfpy

Python offers many different modules for reading and manipulating Excel files. In this guide we are going to use pandas and odfpy:

pip install pandas
pip install odfpy

Step 2: Read the one sheet of Excel(XLS) file

Pandas offers a powerful method for reading any type of Excel files read_excel(). It’s pretty easy to be used and requires only the file path:

import pandas as pd

pd.read_excel('animals.xls')

It will read and return all non empty cells from the Excel file:

	Rank	Animal	Maximum speed	Class	Notes
0	1	Peregrine falcon	389 km/h (242 mph)108 m/s (354 ft/s)[2][6]	Flight-diving	The peregrine falcon is the fastest aerial ani…
1	2	Golden eagle	240–320 km/h (150–200 mph)67–89 m/s (220–293 f…	Flight-diving	Assuming the maximum size at 1.02 m, its relat…
2	3	White-throated needletail swift	169 km/h (105 mph)[8][9][10]	Flight	NaN
3	4	Eurasian hobby	160 km/h (100 mph)[11]	Flight	Can sometimes outfly the swift
4	5	Mexican free-tailed bat	160 km/h (100 mph)[12]	Flight	It has been claimed to have the fastest horizo…
5	6	Frigatebird	153 km/h (95 mph)	Flight	The frigatebird’s high speed is helped by its …
6	7	Rock dove (pigeon)	148.9 km/h (92.5 mph)[13]	Flight	Pigeons have been clocked flying 92.5 mph (148…
7	8	Spur-winged goose	142 km/h (88 mph)[14]	Flight	NaN
8	9	Gyrfalcon	128 km/h (80 mph)[citation needed]	Flight	NaN

Step 3: Read the second sheet of Excel file by name

If you like to read data from a specific sheet — for example Sheet 2 then you can specify the name as a parameter — sheet_name:

pd.read_excel('animals.xlsx', sheet_name="Sheet2")

Which will result in:

	Blackbuck	Unnamed: 1
0	NaN	NaN
1	Male blackbuck	Male blackbuck
2	NaN	NaN
3	Female with young at the National Zoological Park Delhi	Female with young at the National Zoological P…
4	Conservation status	Conservation status
5	Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]	Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)[1]
6	Scientific classification	Scientific classification

Step 4: Python read excel file — specify columns and rows

If you like to read a range of data and not the whole sheet — read_excel offers several very useful parameters.

Python read excel file select rows

Next code example will show you how to read 3 rows skipping the first two rows. In this way Pandas will read only some rows from the whole sheet:

pd.read_excel('animals.xlsx', skiprows=2, nrows=3)

which will result in:

	2	Golden eagle	240–320 km/h (150–200 mph)67–89 m/s (220–293 f…	Flight-diving	Assuming the maximum size at 1.02 m, its relat…
0	3	White-throated needletail swift	169 km/h (105 mph)[8][9][10]	Flight	NaN
1	4	Eurasian hobby	160 km/h (100 mph)[11]	Flight	Can sometimes outfly the swift
2	5	Mexican free-tailed bat	160 km/h (100 mph)[12]	Flight	It has been claimed to have the fastest horizo…

Python read excel file select columns

If you like to** work with few columns** and not the whole sheet — then parameter use_cols can be used as shown:

pd.read_excel('animals.xlsx', usecols='C:D')

Python read excel file specify columns and rows

Finally if you like to select a range from specific columns and rows than you can use:

Which will result into:

	240–320 km/h (150–200 mph)67–89 m/s (220–293 f…	Flight-diving
0	169 km/h (105 mph)[8][9][10]	Flight
1	160 km/h (100 mph)[11]	Flight
2	160 km/h (100 mph)[12]	Flight

Step 5. Read multiple sheets from Excel file

What if you like to read with Pandas multiple sheets from Excel. It’s possible with pd.read_excel by providing a list of all sheets to be read as follows:

pd.read_excel('animals.xlsx', sheet_name=["Sheet1", "Sheet2"])

Note that a dictionary of

• keys — sheet names
• values — resulted DataFrames

will be returned.

In order to access data you can access it by a sheet name as:

pd.read_excel('animals.xlsx', sheet_name=["Sheet1", "Sheet2"]).get('Sheet1')

which will return the data for Sheet1 as a DataFrame.

Read All Sheets

For loading all sheets from Excel file use sheet_name=None:

pd.read_excel('animals.xlsx', sheet_name=None)

Step 6. Pandas read excel data with conversion, NA values and parsing

Finally let’s check what we can do if we need to convert data, drop or fill missing values, parse dates and numbers.

Pandas offers several parameters for this purpose:

• converters — dict of functions for converting values in certain columns
• keep_default_na — whether or not to include the default NaN values
• parse_dates
• ate_parser — converting a sequence of string columns to an array of datetime instances.
• thousands
• convert_float

You can check the Notebook in the resources for more examples of the above.

Resources

• Python Pandas Reading Excel files
• pandas.read_excel
• Notebook —
  Read Excel ODS with Python Pandas

Read Excel files (extensions:.xlsx, .xls) with Python Pandas. To read an excel file as a DataFrame, use the pandas read_excel() method.

You can read the first sheet, specific sheets, multiple sheets or all sheets. Pandas converts this to the DataFrame structure, which is a tabular like structure.

Related course: Data Analysis with Python Pandas

Excel

In this article we use an example Excel file. The programs we’ll make reads Excel into Python.

Creat an excel file with two sheets, sheet1 and sheet2. You can use any Excel supporting program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

The contents of each are as follows:

sheet1:

sheet2:

Install xlrd

Pandas. .read_excel a.) uses a library called xlrd internally.

xlrd is a library for reading (input) Excel files (.xlsx, .xls) in Python.

Related article: How to use xlrd, xlwt to read and write Excel files in Python

If you call pandas.read_excel s() in an environment where xlrd is not installed, you will receive an error message similar to the following:

ImportError: Install xlrd >= 0.9.0 for Excel support

xlrd can be installed with pip. (pip3 depending on the environment)

1	$ pip install xlrd

Read excel

Specify the path or URL of the Excel file in the first argument.
If there are multiple sheets, only the first sheet is used by pandas.
It reads as DataFrame.

1 2 3 4 5

import pandas as pd df = pd.read_excel('sample.xlsx') print(df)

The code above outputs the excel sheet content:

1 2 3 4

Unnamed: 0 A B C 0 one 11 12 13 1 two 21 22 23 2 three 31 32 33

Get sheet

You can specify the sheet to read with the argument sheet_name.

Specify by number (starting at 0)

1 2 3

df_sheet_index = pd.read_excel('sample.xlsx', sheet_name=1) print(df_sheet_index)

1 2 3 4

# AA BB CC # ONE 11 12 13 # TWO 21 22 23 # THREE 31 32 33

Specify by sheet name:

1 2 3

df_sheet_name = pd.read_excel('sample.xlsx', sheet_name='sheet2') print(df_sheet_name)

1 2 3 4

# AA BB CC # ONE 11 12 13 # TWO 21 22 23 # THREE 31 32 33

Load multiple sheets

It is also possible to specify a list in the argumentsheet_name. It is OK even if it is a number of 0 starting or the sheet name.

The specified number or sheet name is the key key, and the data pandas. The DataFrame is read as the ordered dictionary OrderedDict with the value value.

1 2 3

df_sheet_multi = pd.read_excel('sample.xlsx', sheet_name=[0, 'sheet2']) print(df_sheet_multi)

Then you can use it like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

print(df_sheet_multi[0]) print(type(df_sheet_multi[0])) print(df_sheet_multi['sheet2']) print(type(df_sheet_multi['sheet2']))

Load all sheets

If sheet_name argument is none, all sheets are read.

1 2	df_sheet_all = pd.read_excel('sample.xlsx', sheet_name=None) print(df_sheet_all)

In this case, the sheet name becomes the key.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

print(df_sheet_all['sheet1']) print(type(df_sheet_all['sheet1'])) print(df_sheet_all['sheet2']) print(type(df_sheet_all['sheet2']))

Related course: Data Analysis with Python Pandas

In this Pandas tutorial, we will learn how to work with Excel files (e.g., xls) in Python. It will provide an overview of how to use Pandas to load xlsx files and write spreadsheets to Excel.

In the first section, we will go through, with examples, how to use Pandas read_excel to; 1) read an Excel file, 2) read specific columns from a spreadsheet, 3) read multiple spreadsheets, and combine them to one dataframe. Furthermore, we are going to learn how to read many Excel files, and how to convert data according to specific data types (e.g., using Pandas dtypes).

When we have done this, we will continue by learning how to use Pandas to write Excel files; how to name the sheets and how to write to multiple sheets. Make sure to check out the newer post about reading xlsx files in Python with openpyxl, as well.

• Read the How to import Excel into R blog post if you need an overview on how to read xlsx files into R dataframes.

How to Install Pandas

Before we continue with this Pandas read and write Excel files tutorial there is something we need to do; installing Pandas (and Python, of course, if it’s not installed). We can install Pandas using Pip, given that we have Pip installed, that is. See here how to install pip.

# Linux Users
pip install pandas

# Windows Users
python pip install pandasCode language: Bash (bash)

Note, if pip is telling us that there’s a newer version of pip, we may want to upgrade it. In a recent post, we cover how to upgrade pip to the latest version. Finally, before going on to the next section, you can use pip to install a certain version (i.e., older) of a packages usch as Pandas.

Installing Anaconda Scientific Python Distribution

Another great option is to consider is to install the Anaconda Python distribution. This is really an easy and fast way to get started with computer science. No need to worry about installing the packages you need to do computer science separately.

Both of the above methods are explained in this tutorial. Now, in a more recent blog post, we also cover how to install a Python package using pip, conda, and Anaconda. In that post, you will find more information about installing Python packages.

How to Read Excel Files to Pandas Dataframes:

Can Pandas read xlsx files? The short answer is, of course, “yes”. In this section, we are going to learn how to read Excel files and spreadsheets to Pandas dataframe objects. All examples in this Pandas Excel tutorial use local files. Note, that read_excel also can also load Excel files from a URL to a dataframe.  As always when working with Pandas, we have to start by importing the module:

import pandas as pdCode language: Python (python)

Now it’s time to learn how to use Pandas read_excel to read in data from an Excel file. The easiest way to use this method is to pass the file name as a string. If we don’t pass any other parameters, such as sheet name, it will read the first sheet in the index. In the first example, we are not going to use any parameters:

# Pandas read xlsx
df = pd.read_excel('MLBPlayerSalaries.xlsx')
df.head()Code language: Python (python)

Here, Pandas read_excel method read the data from the Excel file into a Pandas dataframe object. We then stored this dataframe into a variable called df.

When using read_excel Pandas will, by default, assign a numeric index or row label to the dataframe, and as usual, when int comes to Python, the index will start with zero. We may have a reason to leave the default index as it is.

For instance, if your data doesn’t have a column with unique values that can serve as a better index. In case there is a column that would serve as a better index, we can override the default behavior.

Setting the Index Column when Reading xls File

This is done by setting the index_col parameter to a column. It takes a numeric value for setting a single column as index or a list of numeric values for creating a multi-index. In the example below, we use the column ‘Player’ as indices. Note, these are not unique and it may, thus, not make sense to use these values as indices.

df = pd.read_excel('MLBPlayerSalaries.xlsx', sheet_names='MLBPlayerSalaries', index_col='Player')Code language: Python (python)

Now, if one or two of your columns, for instance, are objects you use Pandas to_datetime to convert a column, properly.

Importing an Excel File to Pandas in Two Easy Steps:

Now that we know how easy it is to load an Excel file into a Pandas dataframe we are going to continue with learning more about the read_excel method.

Reading Specific Columns using Pandas read_excel

When using Pandas read_excel we will automatically get all columns from an Excel file. If we, for some reason, don’t want to parse all columns in the Excel file, we can use the parameter usecols. Let’s say we want to create a dataframe with the columns Player, Salary, and Position, only. We can do this by adding 1, 3, and 4 in a list:

cols = [1, 2, 3]

df = pd.read_excel('MLBPlayerSalaries.xlsx', sheet_names='MLBPlayerSalaries', usecols=cols)
df.head()Code language: Python (python)

According to the read_excel documentation, we should be able to put in a string. For instance, cols=’Player:Position’ should give us the same results as above.

Handling Missing Data using Pandas read_excel

If our data has missing values in some cells and these missing values are coded in some way, like “Missing” we can use the na_values parameter. 

Pandas Read Excel Example with Missing Data

In the example below, we are using the parameter na_values and we are putting in a string (i.e., “Missing’):

df = pd.read_excel('MLBPlayerSalaries_MD.xlsx', na_values="Missing", sheet_names='MLBPlayerSalaries', usecols=cols)
df.head()Code language: Python (python)

In the read excel examples above we used a dataset that can be downloaded from this page.

•  Read the post Data manipulation with Pandas for three methods on data manipulation of dataframes, including missing data.
• Learn easy methods to clean data using Pandas and Pyjanitor

How to Skip Rows when Reading an Excel File

Now we will learn how to skip rows when loading an Excel file using Pandas. For this read excel example, we will use data that can be downloaded here.

In the following Pandas read_excel example we load the sheet ‘session1’, which contains rows that we need to skip (these rows contain some information about the dataset).

We will use the parameter sheet_name=’Session1′ to read the sheet named ‘Session1’ (the example data contains more sheets; e.g., ‘Session2’ will load that sheet). Note, the first sheet will be read if we don’t use the sheet_name parameter. In this example, the important part is the parameter skiprow=2. We use this to skip the first two rows:

df = pd.read_excel('example_sheets1.xlsx', sheet_name='Session1', skiprows=2)
df.head()Code language: Python (python)

Another way to get Pandas read_excel to read from the Nth row is by using the header parameter. In the example Excel file, we use here, the third row contains the headers and we will use the parameter header=2 to tell Pandas read_excel that our headers are on the third row.

df = pd.read_excel('example_sheets1.xlsx', sheet_name='Session1', header=2)Code language: Python (python)

Now, if we want Pandas read_excel to read from the second row, we change the number in the skiprows and header arguments to 2, and so on.

Reading Multiple Excel Sheets to Pandas Dataframes

In this section, of the Pandas read excel tutorial, we are going to learn how to read multiple sheets. Our Excel file, example_sheets1.xlsx’, has two sheets: ‘Session1’, and ‘Session2.’ Each sheet has data from an imagined experimental session. In the next example we are going to read both sheets, ‘Session1’ and ‘Session2’. Here’s how to use Pandas read_excel to read multiple sheets:

df = pd.read_excel('example_sheets1.xlsx', 
    sheet_name=['Session1', 'Session2'], skiprows=2)Code language: Python (python)

By using the parameter sheet_name, and a list of names, we will get an ordered dictionary containing two dataframes:

dfCode language: Python (python)

When working with Pandas read_excel we may want to join the data from all sheets (in this case sessions). Merging Pandas dataframes are quite easy; we just use the concat function and loop over the keys (i.e., sheets):

df2 = pd.concat(df[frame] for frame in data.keys())Code language: Python (python)

Now in the example Excel file, there is a column identifying the dataset (e.g., session number). However, maybe we don’t have that kind of information in our Excel file. To merge the two dataframes and adding a column depicting which session we can use a for loop:

dfs = []
for framename in data.keys():
    temp_df = data[framename]
    temp_df['Session'] = framename
    dfs.append(temp_df)
    
df = pd.concat(dfs)Code language: Python (python)

In the code above, we start by creating a list and continue by looping through the keys in the list of dataframes. Finally, we create a temporary dataframe and take the sheet name and add it in the column ‘Session’.

Pandas Read Excel: How to Read All Sheets

Now, it is, of course, possible that when we want to read multiple sheets we also want to read all the sheets in the Excel file. That is, if we want to use read_excel to load all sheets from an Excel file to a dataframe it is possible. When reading multiple sheets and we want all sheets we can set the parameter sheet_name to None. 

all_sheets_df = pd.read_excel('example_sheets1.xlsx', sheet_name=None)Code language: Python (python)

Pandas Read Excel: Reading Many Excel Files

In this section, of the Pandas read excel tutorial, we will learn how to load many files into a Pandas dataframe because, in some cases, we may have a lot of Excel files containing data from, let’s say, different experiments. In Python, we can use the modules os and fnmatch to read all files in a directory. Finally, we use list comprehension to use read_excel on all files we found:

import os, fnmatch
xlsx_files = fnmatch.filter(os.listdir('.'), '*concat*.xlsx')

dfs = [pd.read_excel(xlsx_file) for xlsx_file in xlsx_files]Code language: Python (python)

If it makes sense we can, again, use the function concat to merge the dataframes:

df = pd.concat(dfs, sort=False)Code language: Python (python)

There are other methods for reading many Excel files and merging them. We can, for instance, use the module glob together with Pandas concat to read multiple xlsx files:

import glob
list_of_xlsx = glob.glob('./*concat*.xlsx') 
df = pd.concat(list_of_xlsx)Code language: Python (python)

Note, the files in this example, where we read multiple xlsx files using Pandas, are located here. They are named example_concat.xlsx, example_concat1.xlsx, and example_concat3.xlsx and should be added to the same directory as the Python script. Another option, of course, is to add the file path to the files. E.g., if we want to read multiple Excel files, using Pandas read_excel method, and they are stored in a directory called “SimData” we would do as follows:

import glob
list_of_xlsx = glob.glob('./SimData/*concat*.xlsx') 
df = pd.concat(list_of_xlsx)Code language: Python (python)

Setting the Data Type for Data or Columns

If we need to, we can also, set the data type for the columns when reading Excel files using Pandas. Let’s use Pandas to read the example_sheets1.xlsx again. In the Pandas read_excel example below we use the dtype parameter to set the data type of some of the columns.

df = pd.read_excel('example_sheets1.xlsx',sheet_name='Session1',
                   header=1,dtype={'Names':str,'ID':str,
                                        'Mean':int, 'Session':str})Code language: Python (python)

We can use the method info to see the what data types the different columns have:

df.info()Code language: Python (python)

Writing Pandas Dataframes to Excel

Excel files can, of course, be created in Python using Pandas to_excel method. In this section of the post, we will learn how to create an excel file using Pandas. First, before writing an Excel file, we will create a dataframe containing some variables. Before that, we need to import Pandas:

import pandas as pdCode language: Python (python)

The next step is to create the dataframe. We will create the dataframe using a dictionary. The keys will be the column names and the values will be lists containing our data:

df = pd.DataFrame({'Names':['Andreas', 'George', 'Steve',
                           'Sarah', 'Joanna', 'Hanna'],
                  'Age':[21, 22, 20, 19, 18, 23]})Code language: Python (python)

In this Pandas write to Excel example, we will write the dataframe to an Excel file using the to_excel method. Noteworthy, when using Pandas to_excel in the code chunk below, we don’t use any parameters.

df.to_excel('NamesAndAges.xlsx')Code language: Python (python)

In the Excel file created when using Pandas to_excel is shown below. Evidently, if we don’t use the parameter sheet_name we get the default sheet name, ‘Sheet1’. Now, we can also see that we get a new column in our Excel file containing numbers. These are the index from the dataframe.

If we want our sheet to be named something else and we don’t want the index column we can add the following argument and parameters when we use Pandas to write to Excel:

df.to_excel('NamesAndAges.xlsx', sheet_name='Names and Ages', index=False)Code language: Python (python)

Writing Multiple Pandas Dataframes to an Excel File:

In this section, we are going to use Pandas ExcelWriter and Pandas to_excel to write multiple Pandas dataframes to one Excel file. That is if we happen to have many dataframes that we want to store in one Excel file but on different sheets, we can do this easily. However, we need to use Pandas ExcelWriter now:

df1 = pd.DataFrame({'Names': ['Andreas', 'George', 'Steve',
                           'Sarah', 'Joanna', 'Hanna'],
                   'Age':[21, 22, 20, 19, 18, 23]})

df2 = pd.DataFrame({'Names': ['Pete', 'Jordan', 'Gustaf',
                           'Sophie', 'Sally', 'Simone'],
                   'Age':[22, 21, 19, 19, 29, 21]})

df3 = pd.DataFrame({'Names': ['Ulrich', 'Donald', 'Jon',
                           'Jessica', 'Elisabeth', 'Diana'],
                   'Age':[21, 21, 20, 19, 19, 22]})

dfs = {'Group1':df1, 'Group2':df2, 'Group3':df3}
writer = pd.ExcelWriter('NamesAndAges.xlsx', engine='xlsxwriter')

for sheet_name in dfs.keys():
    dfs[sheet_name].to_excel(writer, sheet_name=sheet_name, index=False)
    
writer.save()Code language: Python (python)

In the code above, we create 3 dataframes and then we continue to put them in a dictionary. Note, the keys are the sheet names and the cell names are the dataframes. After this is done we create a writer object using the xlsxwriter engine. We then continue by looping through the keys (i.e., sheet names) and add each sheet. Finally, the file is saved. Note, the final step is important as leaving this out will not give you the intended results.

Of course, there are other ways to store data. One of them is using JSON files. See the latest tutorial on how to read and write JSON files using Pandas to learn about one way to load and save data in the JSON format.

More resources on how to load data in different formats:

• How to read and write CSV files using Pandas
• How to read and write SPSS files using Python

Summary: How to Work With Excel Files using Pandas

That was it! In this post, we have learned a lot! We have, among other things, learned how to:

• Read Excel files and Spreadsheets using read_excel
  • Load Excel files to dataframes:
    • Read Excel sheets and skip rows
    • Merging many sheets to a dataframe
    • Loading many Excel files into one dataframe
• Write a dataframe to an Excel file
• Taking many dataframes and writing them to one Excel file with many sheets

Leave a comment below if you have any requests or suggestions on what should be covered next! Check the post A Basic Pandas Dataframe Tutorial for Beginners to learn more about working with Pandas dataframe. That is after you have loaded them from a file (e.g., Excel spreadsheets)

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Python and Pandas to read Excel files using the Pandas read_excel function. Excel files are everywhere – and while they may not be the ideal data type for many data scientists, knowing how to work with them is an essential skill.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have learned:

• How to use the Pandas read_excel function to read an Excel file
• How to read specify an Excel sheet name to read into Pandas
• How to read multiple Excel sheets or files
• How to certain columns from an Excel file in Pandas
• How to skip rows when reading Excel files in Pandas
• And more

Let’s get started!

The Quick Answer: Use Pandas read_excel to Read Excel Files

To read Excel files in Python’s Pandas, use the read_excel() function. You can specify the path to the file and a sheet name to read, as shown below:

# Reading an Excel File in Pandas
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel('/Users/datagy/Desktop/Sales.xlsx')

# With a Sheet Name
df = pd.read_excel(
   io='/Users/datagy/Desktop/Sales.xlsx'
   sheet_name ='North'
)

In the following sections of this tutorial, you’ll learn more about the Pandas read_excel() function to better understand how to customize reading Excel files.

Understanding the Pandas read_excel Function

The Pandas read_excel() function has a ton of different parameters. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the main parameters available to you that provide incredible flexibility in terms of how you read Excel files in Pandas.

Parameter	Description	Available Option
io=	The string path to the workbook.	URL to file, path to file, etc.
sheet_name=	The name of the sheet to read. Will default to the first sheet in the workbook (position 0).	Can read either strings (for the sheet name), integers (for position), or lists (for multiple sheets)
usecols=	The columns to read, if not all columns are to be read	Can be strings of columns, Excel-style columns (“A:C”), or integers representing positions columns
dtype=	The datatypes to use for each column	Dictionary with columns as keys and data types as values
skiprows=	The number of rows to skip from the top	Integer value representing the number of rows to skip
nrows=	The number of rows to parse	Integer value representing the number of rows to read

The table above highlights some of the key parameters available in the Pandas .read_excel() function. The full list can be found in the official documentation. In the following sections, you’ll learn how to use the parameters shown above to read Excel files in different ways using Python and Pandas.

As shown above, the easiest way to read an Excel file using Pandas is by simply passing in the filepath to the Excel file. The io= parameter is the first parameter, so you can simply pass in the string to the file.

The parameter accepts both a path to a file, an HTTP path, an FTP path or more. Let’s see what happens when we read in an Excel file hosted on my Github page.

# Reading an Excel file in Pandas
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel('https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx')
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    191
# 1 2022-04-02        B    727
# 2 2022-04-03        A    782
# 3 2022-04-04        B    561
# 4 2022-04-05        A    969

If you’ve downloaded the file and taken a look at it, you’ll notice that the file has three sheets? So, how does Pandas know which sheet to load? By default, Pandas will use the first sheet (positionally), unless otherwise specified.

In the following section, you’ll learn how to specify which sheet you want to load into a DataFrame.

How to Specify Excel Sheet Names in Pandas read_excel

As shown in the previous section, you learned that when no sheet is specified, Pandas will load the first sheet in an Excel workbook. In the workbook provided, there are three sheets in the following structure:

Sales.xlsx
|---East
|---West
|---North

Because of this, we know that the data from the sheet “East” was loaded. If we wanted to load the data from the sheet “West”, we can use the sheet_name= parameter to specify which sheet we want to load.

The parameter accepts both a string as well as an integer. If we were to pass in a string, we can specify the sheet name that we want to load.

Let’s take a look at how we can specify the sheet name for 'West':

# Specifying an Excel Sheet to Load by Name
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name='West')
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    504
# 1 2022-04-02        B    361
# 2 2022-04-03        A    694
# 3 2022-04-04        B    702
# 4 2022-04-05        A    255

Similarly, we can load a sheet name by its position. By default, Pandas will use the position of 0, which will load the first sheet. Say we wanted to repeat our earlier example and load the data from the sheet named 'West', we would need to know where the sheet is located.

Because we know the sheet is the second sheet, we can pass in the 1st index:

# Specifying an Excel Sheet to Load by Position
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name=1)
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    504
# 1 2022-04-02        B    361
# 2 2022-04-03        A    694
# 3 2022-04-04        B    702
# 4 2022-04-05        A    255

We can see that both of these methods returned the same sheet’s data. In the following section, you’ll learn how to specify which columns to load when using the Pandas read_excel function.

How to Specify Columns Names in Pandas read_excel

There may be many times when you don’t want to load every column in an Excel file. This may be because the file has too many columns or has different columns for different worksheets.

In order to do this, we can use the usecols= parameter. It’s a very flexible parameter that lets you specify:

• A list of column names,
• A string of Excel column ranges,
• A list of integers specifying the column indices to load

Most commonly, you’ll encounter people using a list of column names to read in. Each of these columns are comma separated strings, contained in a list.

Let’s load our DataFrame from the example above, only this time only loading the 'Customer' and 'Sales' columns:

# Specifying Columns to Load by Name
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    usecols=['Customer', 'Sales'])
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#   Customer  Sales
# 0        A    191
# 1        B    727
# 2        A    782
# 3        B    561
# 4        A    969

We can see that by passing in the list of strings representing the columns, we were able to parse those columns only.

If we wanted to use Excel changes, we could also specify columns 'B:C'. Let’s see what this looks like below:

# Specifying Columns to Load by Excel Range
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    usecols='B:C')
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#   Customer  Sales
# 0        A    191
# 1        B    727
# 2        A    782
# 3        B    561
# 4        A    969

Finally, we can also pass in a list of integers that represent the positions of the columns we wanted to load. Because the columns are the second and third columns, we would load a list of integers as shown below:

# Specifying Columns to Load by Their Position
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    usecols=[1,2])
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#   Customer  Sales
# 0        A    191
# 1        B    727
# 2        A    782
# 3        B    561
# 4        A    969

In the following section, you’ll learn how to specify data types when reading Excel files.

How to Specify Data Types in Pandas read_excel

Pandas makes it easy to specify the data type of different columns when reading an Excel file. This serves three main purposes:

1. Preventing data from being read incorrectly
2. Speeding up the read operation
3. Saving memory

You can pass in a dictionary where the keys are the columns and the values are the data types. This ensures that data are ready correctly. Let’s see how we can specify the data types for our columns.

# Specifying Data Types for Columns When Reading Excel Files
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    dtype={'date':'datetime64', 'Customer': 'object', 'Sales':'int'})
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#   Customer  Sales
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    191
# 1 2022-04-02        B    727
# 2 2022-04-03        A    782
# 3 2022-04-04        B    561
# 4 2022-04-05        A    969

It’s important to note that you don’t need to pass in all the columns for this to work. In the next section, you’ll learn how to skip rows when reading Excel files.

How to Skip Rows When Reading Excel Files in Pandas

In some cases, you’ll encounter files where there are formatted title rows in your Excel file, as shown below:

If we were to read the sheet 'North', we would get the following returned:

# Reading a poorly formatted Excel file
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name='North')
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#            North Sales Unnamed: 1 Unnamed: 2
# 0     Totals Available        NaN        NaN
# 1                 Date   Customer      Sales
# 2  2022-04-01 00:00:00          A        164
# 3  2022-04-02 00:00:00          B        612
# 4  2022-04-03 00:00:00          A        260

Pandas makes it easy to skip a certain number of rows when reading an Excel file. This can be done using the skiprows= parameter. We can see that we need to skip two rows, so we can simply pass in the value 2, as shown below:

# Reading a Poorly Formatted File Correctly
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name='North',
    skiprows=2)
print(df.head())

# Returns:
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    164
# 1 2022-04-02        B    612
# 2 2022-04-03        A    260
# 3 2022-04-04        B    314
# 4 2022-04-05        A    215

This read the file much more accurately! It can be a lifesaver when working with poorly formatted files. In the next section, you’ll learn how to read multiple sheets in an Excel file in Pandas.

How to Read Multiple Sheets in an Excel File in Pandas

Pandas makes it very easy to read multiple sheets at the same time. This can be done using the sheet_name= parameter. In our earlier examples, we passed in only a single string to read a single sheet. However, you can also pass in a list of sheets to read multiple sheets at once.

Let’s see how we can read our first two sheets:

# Reading Multiple Excel Sheets at Once in Pandas
import pandas as pd

dfs = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name=['East', 'West'])

print(type(dfs))

# Returns: <class 'dict'>

In the example above, we passed in a list of sheets to read. When we used the type() function to check the type of the returned value, we saw that a dictionary was returned.

Each of the sheets is a key of the dictionary with the DataFrame being the corresponding key’s value. Let’s see how we can access the 'West' DataFrame:

# Reading Multiple Excel Sheets in Pandas
import pandas as pd

dfs = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name=['East', 'West'])

print(dfs.get('West').head())

# Returns: 
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    504
# 1 2022-04-02        B    361
# 2 2022-04-03        A    694
# 3 2022-04-04        B    702
# 4 2022-04-05        A    255

You can also read all of the sheets at once by specifying None for the value of sheet_name=. Similarly, this returns a dictionary of all sheets:

# Reading Multiple Excel Sheets in Pandas
import pandas as pd

dfs = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    sheet_name=None)

In the next section, you’ll learn how to read multiple Excel files in Pandas.

How to Read Only n Lines When Reading Excel Files in Pandas

When working with very large Excel files, it can be helpful to only sample a small subset of the data first. This allows you to quickly load the file to better be able to explore the different columns and data types.

This can be done using the nrows= parameter, which accepts an integer value of the number of rows you want to read into your DataFrame. Let’s see how we can read the first five rows of the Excel sheet:

# Reading n Number of Rows of an Excel Sheet
import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel(
    io='https://github.com/datagy/mediumdata/raw/master/Sales.xlsx',
    nrows=5)
print(df)

# Returns:
#         Date Customer  Sales
# 0 2022-04-01        A    191
# 1 2022-04-02        B    727
# 2 2022-04-03        A    782
# 3 2022-04-04        B    561
# 4 2022-04-05        A    969

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to use Python and Pandas to read Excel files into a DataFrame using the .read_excel() function. You learned how to use the function to read an Excel, specify sheet names, read only particular columns, and specify data types. You then learned how skip rows, read only a set number of rows, and read multiple sheets.

Additional Resources

To learn more about related topics, check out the tutorials below:

• Pandas Dataframe to CSV File – Export Using .to_csv()
• Combine Data in Pandas with merge, join, and concat
• Introduction to Pandas for Data Science
• Summarizing and Analyzing a Pandas DataFrame