python xlrd unsupported format, or corrupt file.

My code:

import xlrd
wb = xlrd.open_workbook("Z:\\Data\\Locates\\3.8 locates.xls")
sh = wb.sheet_by_index(0)
print sh.cell(0,0).value

The error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Z:\Wilson\tradedStockStatus.py", line 18, in <module>
wb = xlrd.open_workbook("Z:\\Data\\Locates\\3.8 locates.xls")
File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line 429, in open_workbook
biff_version = bk.getbof(XL_WORKBOOK_GLOBALS)
File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line 1545, in getbof
bof_error('Expected BOF record; found %r' % self.mem[savpos:savpos+8])
File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\xlrd\__init__.py", line 1539, in bof_error
raise XLRDError('Unsupported format, or corrupt file: ' + msg)
xlrd.biffh.XLRDError: Unsupported format, or corrupt file: Expected BOF record;
found '<table r'"

The file doesn't seem to be corrupted or of a different format. Anything to help find the source of the issue would be great.

Solution 1:

Try to open it as an HTML with pandas:

import pandas as pd
data = pd.read_html('filename.xls')

Or try any other html python parser.

That's not a proper excel file, but an html readable with excel.

Solution 2:

You say:

The file doesn't seem to be corrupted or of a different format.

However as the error message says, the first 8 bytes of the file are '<table r' ... that is definitely not Excel .xls format. Open it with a text editor (e.g. Notepad) that won't take any notice of the (incorrect) .xls extension and see for yourself.

Solution 3:

This will happen to some files while also open in Excel.

Solution 4:

I had a similar problem and it was related to the version. In a python terminal check:

>> import xlrd
>> xlrd.__VERSION__

If you have '0.9.0' you can open almost all files. If you have '0.6.0' which was what I found on Ubuntu, you may have problems with newest Excel files. You can download the latest version of xlrd using the Distutils standard.