title: Pandas 0.19.2 read_excel IndexError: List index out of range
body: <p>I am looking to parse an excel spreadsheet. I decided to use pandas but got caught by an error straight off the bat.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/XVNlq.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/XVNlq.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>I started with the code below but played around with using a full path and also tried setting the sheetname.</p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  
  table = pd.read_excel('ss_12.xlsx')
  
  if __name__ == '__main__':
      pass
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The excel spreadsheet is in the same directory as my script file. I taught it would work the same as open() in this sense, just a name required if its in the same directory. I have looked at a few examples online and going by them this should work.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jx0tw.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jx0tw.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>I am trying to strip the first column seen in the image above. The full error (not sure how to format it, sorry)</p>
  
  <pre><code>C:\xx\Playpen\ConfigList_V1_0.xlsx
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "C:\xx\Playpen\getConVars.py", line 12, in &lt;module&gt;
      pd.read_excel(excelFile)
    File "C:\xx\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\excel.py", line 200, in read_excel
      **kwds)
    File "C:\xx\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\pandas\io\excel.py", line 432, in _parse_excel
      sheet = self.book.sheet_by_index(asheetname)
    File "C:\xx\Programs\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\xlrd\book.py", line 432, in sheet_by_index
      return self._sheet_list[sheetx] or self.get_sheet(sheetx)
  IndexError: list index out of range
  </code></pre>