title: Can't parse string "N/A" from .XLSX in Python 2.7 with pandas
body: <p>I've got a large Excel spreadsheet that I'm trying to parse into Python2.7 and pandas 0.19.1 to insert the data into a MySQL database. As part of this, some of the cells contain the string "N/A". Unfortunately, pandas doesn't seem to be able to parse "N/A", instead it imports nan. When including single or double quotation marks around the string, pandas imports it as ""N/A"" and 'N/A' respectively, and does not match my data.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way to read the string "N/A" without modifying the existing data?</p>
  
  <p>MWE follows, including link to test data file on GitHub:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import pandas as pd
  loadData = pd.ExcelFile("testData.xlsx")
  testData = loadData.parse("Sheet1")
  
  for row in testData.itertuples(index=True, name='testTuple'):     
      if getattr(row, "Value") == "N/A":
          print(row)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Link to test data file: <a href="https://github.com/quacksawbones/testData/blob/master/testData.xlsx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/quacksawbones/testData/blob/master/testData.xlsx</a></p>
  
  <p>(NB: First question on StackOverflow. Please let me know if I've missed anything or need more information)</p>