title: Cannot read an Excel file in pandas
body: <p>I am using Juypter which I launch from the same directory which contains the notebook and Excel file.  I use the following commands:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  !ls      # Returns the contents of the working directory.  Use "dir" in a Windows.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which returns:</p>
  
  <p>Book1.xlsx<br>
     common_excel_tasks.ipynb</p>
  
  <p>I then use the following commands:</p>
  
  <pre><code>excel_file = 'Book1.xlsx'
  df1 = pd.read_excel(excel_file)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But I get the following error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
  &lt;ipython-input-3-28585effb1ed&gt; in &lt;module&gt;
        1 excel_file = 'Book1.xlsx'
  ----&gt; 2 df1 = pd.read_excel(excel_file)
  
  /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/util/_decorators.py in wrapper(*args, **kwargs)
      206                 else:
      207                     kwargs[new_arg_name] = new_arg_value
  --&gt; 208             return func(*args, **kwargs)
      209 
      210         return wrapper
  
  /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/io/excel/_base.py in read_excel(io, sheet_name, header, names, index_col, usecols, squeeze, dtype, engine, converters, true_values, false_values, skiprows, nrows, na_values, keep_default_na, verbose, parse_dates, date_parser, thousands, comment, skip_footer, skipfooter, convert_float, mangle_dupe_cols, **kwds)
      308 
      309     if not isinstance(io, ExcelFile):
  --&gt; 310         io = ExcelFile(io, engine=engine)
      311     elif engine and engine != io.engine:
      312         raise ValueError(
  
  /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/io/excel/_base.py in __init__(self, io, engine)
      817         self._io = _stringify_path(io)
      818 
  --&gt; 819         self._reader = self._engines[engine](self._io)
      820 
      821     def __fspath__(self):
  
  /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/io/excel/_xlrd.py in __init__(self, filepath_or_buffer)
       18         """
       19         err_msg = "Install xlrd &gt;= 1.0.0 for Excel support"
  ---&gt; 20         import_optional_dependency("xlrd", extra=err_msg)
       21         super().__init__(filepath_or_buffer)
       22 
  
  /usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/compat/_optional.py in import_optional_dependency(name, extra, raise_on_missing, on_version)
       91     except ImportError:
       92         if raise_on_missing:
  ---&gt; 93             raise ImportError(message.format(name=name, extra=extra)) from None
       94         else:
       95             return None
  
  ImportError: Missing optional dependency 'xlrd'. Install xlrd &gt;= 1.0.0 for Excel support Use pip or conda to install xlrd.
  </code></pre>