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How can you read the data from a named range in Excel into a pandas DataFrame?

Unfortunately, the canonical function pandas.read_excel() is designed to only read entire sheets within a workbook.

Answers

Maybe someday pandas will support this natively. Until then, I use a helper function:

import pandas as pd
import openpyxl

def data_frame_from_xlsx(xlsx_file, range_name):
    """ Get a single rectangular region from the specified file.
    range_name can be a standard Excel reference ('Sheet1!A2:B7') or 
    refer to a named region ('my_cells')."""
    wb = openpyxl.load_workbook(xlsx_file, data_only=True, read_only=True)
    if '!' in range_name:
        # passed a worksheet!cell reference
        ws_name, reg = range_name.split('!')
        if ws_name.startswith("'") and ws_name.endswith("'"):
            # optionally strip single quotes around sheet name
            ws_name = ws_name[1:-1]
        region = wb[ws_name][reg]
    else:
        # passed a named range; find the cells in the workbook
        full_range = wb.get_named_range(range_name)
        if full_range is None:
            raise ValueError(
                'Range "{}" not found in workbook "{}".'.format(range_name, xlsx_file)
            )
        # convert to list (openpyxl 2.3 returns a list but 2.4+ returns a generator)
        destinations = list(full_range.destinations) 
        if len(destinations) > 1:
            raise ValueError(
                'Range "{}" in workbook "{}" contains more than one region.'
                .format(range_name, xlsx_file)
            )
        ws, reg = destinations[0]
        # convert to worksheet object (openpyxl 2.3 returns a worksheet object 
        # but 2.4+ returns the name of a worksheet)
        if isinstance(ws, str):
            ws = wb[ws]
        region = ws[reg]
    # an anonymous user suggested this to catch a single-cell range (untested):
    # if not isinstance(region, 'tuple'): df = pd.DataFrame(region.value)
    df = pd.DataFrame([cell.value for cell in row] for row in region)
    return df