Valueerror: excel file format cannot be determined, you must specify an engine manually.

The error “ValueError: Excel file format cannot be determined, you must specify an engine manually” occurs when trying to read an Excel file using the pandas library without specifying the engine parameter. This error often happens when the file format cannot be automatically inferred and pandas needs additional information to properly read the file.

To fix this error, you need to manually specify the engine parameter when using pandas’ read_excel() function. The engine parameter determines the library used to parse the Excel file. There are two commonly used engines:

• xlrd: This is the default engine and supports older Excel files (xls format). You need to install the xlrd library separately.
• openpyxl: This engine supports newer Excel files (xlsx format). It is generally recommended to use this engine as it offers better performance and more features. You need to install the openpyxl library separately.

Here are examples of how to specify the engine parameter when reading an Excel file using pandas:

    
import pandas as pd

# Reading an older Excel file (xls format) using xlrd engine
data1 = pd.read_excel('file.xls', engine='xlrd')

# Reading a newer Excel file (xlsx format) using openpyxl engine
data2 = pd.read_excel('file.xlsx', engine='openpyxl')
    
  

In the examples above, ‘file.xls’ and ‘file.xlsx’ should be replaced with the actual paths or filenames of your Excel files. By specifying the engine parameter, you provide pandas with the necessary information to read the file correctly and avoid the “ValueError: Excel file format cannot be determined” error.