title: Reading a .xls file using pandas read_excel
body: <p>I have a <code>.xls</code> file that I have no trouble opening in Excel. Unfortunately, when trying to call the following function from the pandas module:</p>
  
  <pre><code>survey = pd.read_excel('ISU_Anketa_Ishodnie.xls', skiprows=1)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I receive the following error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>XLRDError: Unsupported format, or corrupt file: Expected BOF record; found b''&lt;'?xml ve'</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I have tried saving that file in <code>.csv</code> format, but the only option Excel provides for delimiter is a comma, which is a problem as the data itself includes a lot of commas. </p>