Pandas IndexError when opening Excel file

Question

Whatever I do - no matter what Excel file i use, I cannot open them. It was working before... What I do:

import pandas as pd
xls = pd.ExcelFile('Book1.xls')
xls.parse('Sheet1', index_col=0, na_values=['None'])    

or also

pd.read_excel('Book1.xls', 'Sheet1', index_col=0, na_values=['None'])

What I get:

IndexError                                Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-35-a09cadf6215b> in <module>()
      2 xls = pd.ExcelFile('Book1.xls')
      3 #test = xls.parse('SFH', index_col=0, na_values=['None'])
----> 4 pd.read_excel('Book1.xls', 'Sheet1', index_col=0, na_values=['None'])

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/excel.pyc in read_excel(io, sheetname, **kwds)
    101     engine = kwds.pop('engine', None)
    102 
--> 103     return ExcelFile(io, engine=engine).parse(sheetname=sheetname, **kwds)
    104 
    105 

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/excel.pyc in parse(self, sheetname, header, skiprows, skip_footer, index_col, parse_cols, parse_dates, date_parser, na_values, thousands, chunksize, convert_float, has_index_names, **kwds)
    206                                  skip_footer=skip_footer,
    207                                  convert_float=convert_float,
--> 208                                  **kwds)
    209 
    210     def _should_parse(self, i, parse_cols):

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/excel.pyc in _parse_excel(self, sheetname, header, skiprows, skip_footer, index_col, has_index_names, parse_cols, parse_dates, date_parser, na_values, thousands, chunksize, convert_float, **kwds)
    302                             **kwds)
    303 
--> 304         return parser.read()
    305 
    306     @property

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in read(self, nrows)
    624                 raise ValueError('skip_footer not supported for iteration')
    625 
--> 626         ret = self._engine.read(nrows)
    627 
    628         if self.options.get('as_recarray'):

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in read(self, rows)
   1459 
   1460         data = self._convert_data(data)
-> 1461         index, columns = self._make_index(data, alldata, columns, indexnamerow)
   1462 
   1463         return index, columns, data

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in _make_index(self, data, alldata, columns, indexnamerow)
    791 
    792         elif not self._has_complex_date_col:
--> 793             index = self._get_simple_index(alldata, columns)
    794             index = self._agg_index(index)
    795 

/Users/xy/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in _get_simple_index(self, data, columns)
    834             data.pop(i)
    835             if not self._implicit_index:
--> 836                 columns.pop(i)
    837 
    838         return index

IndexError: pop from empty list

Am I doing something wrong? Should I file a bug report?

Answer 1

Make sure the first row of the Excel file is not empty...