Python Pandas reading UTF-8 characters
Double Check if Excel is saved as UTF-8
In Excel 2016 When saving as: click More Options > Tools > Web Options > Encoding > Save this document as ... (pick UTF-8 from the list)
Saving Excel as csv or even txt helps in many cases too.
If csv or txt exported from Excel also doesn't open/work properly
open it in notepad and save it again selecting proper UTF-8 encoding
I am trying to read an Excel file containing the Swedish characters åäö. 
I am importing the Excel file with pd.read_excel(path, sheetname, encoding='utf8')
Works fine to import it and I can see the åäö characters, but when I work with the data for example creating a new variable df['East'] = df['Öst'] + 50 I receive an error message 
Ascii codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 33: ordinal not in range 
Anyone that can help me solve this issue?