title: Pandas Read_Excel Datetime Converter
body: <p>Using Python 3.6 and Pandas 0.19.2: How do you read in an excel file and change a column to datetime straight from <code>read_excel</code>? Similar to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32591466/python-pandas-how-to-specify-data-types-when-reading-an-excel-file">This Question about converters and dtypes</a>. But I want to read in a certain column as <code>datetime</code></p>
  
  <p>I want to change this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  import datetime
  import numpy as np
  
  file = 'PATH_HERE'
  
  df1 = pd.read_excel(file)
  
  df1['COLUMN'] = pd.to_datetime(df1['COLUMN']) # &lt;--- Line to get rid of
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>into something like:
  <code>df1 = pd.read_excel(file, dtypes= {'COLUMN': datetime})</code></p>
  
  <p>The code does not error, but in my example, <code>COLUMN</code> is still a dtype of <code>int64</code> after calling <code>print(df1['COLUMN'].dtype)</code></p>
  
  <p>I have tried using <code>np.datetime64</code> instead of <code>datetime</code>. I have also tried using  <code>converters=</code> instead of <code>dtypes=</code> but to no avail. This may be nit picky, but would be a nice feature to implement in my code.</p>