Why we cannot use openpyxl to read excel files in pandas?

[reaCodes]

When using read_excel to read excel files, I have to install xlrd.
read_excel has parameter engine, but its value only can be None or xlrd.
ExcelWrite can use openpyxl as engine.

Why we cannot use openpyxl to read excel files in pandas? Or whether I can or not?

[chris-b1]

From what I recall this is because 1) xlrd is mature is works well, and 2) openpyxl doesn't support the legacy xls binary format.

Would probably take a pr supporting openpyxl as a reader if there are performance or other benefits

[cloje]

I will write the PR to add openpyxl as a reader

[WillAyd]

Closing as a duplicate of #11499

[Themanwithoutaplan]

@chris-b1 xlrd may be mature but it's XLSX support is limited. For example charts, images, formatting, pivot tables are all supported by openpyxl. xlrd is, at the time of writing, faster but this will change once openpyxl 2.6 is released.

[chris-b1]

Thanks for the color @Themanwithoutaplan - definitely didn't mean to disparage openpyxl, only meant for our purposes (not currently reading any formatting, charts, etc) xlrd works well. If performance is improved in 2.6 definitely would be excited for that as an option!