title: How to determine the excel cell value type(data type such as date, string, float etc.)
body: <p>I want to read the cell(1,1) value in the excel sheet, it is date in the format of <code>21-08-18</code>. 
  I'm using the python package <code>xlrd</code> to read the value, it returns the float value ex. like 4567.0</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-py prettyprint-override"><code>book = xlrd.open_workbook(path)
  compSheet = book.sheet_by_name("sheet_name")
  cell_value = compSheet.cell_value(1, 1)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How to know the data type of the cell before reading the value whether it is <code>date</code> or <code>string</code> or <code>float</code> or etc.</p>