Can't export pandas dataframe to excel / encoding

I'm unable to export one of my dataframes due to some encoding difficulty. ``` sjM.dtypes Customer Name object Total Sales float64 Sales Rank float64 Visit_Frequency float64 Last_Sale datetime64[ns] dtype: object ``` csv export works fine ``` path = 'c:\\test' sjM.to_csv(path + '.csv') # Works ``` but the excel export fails ``` sjM.to_excel(path + '.xls') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "testing.py", line 338, in <module> sjM.to_excel(path + '.xls') File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\pandas\core\frame.py", line 1197, in to_excel excel_writer.save() File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\pandas\io\excel.py", line 595, in save return self.book.save(self.path) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\Workbook.py", line 662, in save doc.save(filename, self.get_biff_data()) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\Workbook.py", line 637, in get_biff_data shared_str_table = self.__sst_rec() File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\Workbook.py", line 599, in __sst_rec return self.__sst.get_biff_record() File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\BIFFRecords.py", line 76, in get_biff_record self._add_to_sst(s) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\BIFFRecords.py", line 91, in _add_to_sst u_str = upack2(s, self.encoding) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\UnicodeUtils.py", line 50, in upack2 us = unicode(s, encoding) UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0x81 in position 22: ordinal not in range(128) ``` I know that the problem is coming from the 'Customer Name' column, as after deletion the export to excel works fine. I've tried following advice from that question (Python pandas to_excel 'utf8' codec can't decode byte), using a function to decode and re-encode the offending column ``` def changeencode(data): cols = data.columns for col in cols: if data[col].dtype == 'O': data[col] = data[col].str.decode('latin-1').str.encode('utf-8') return data sJM = changeencode(sjM) sjM['Customer Name'].str.decode('utf-8') L2-00864 SETIA 2 K1-00279 BERKAT JAYA L2-00664 TK. ANTO BR00035 BRASIL JAYA,TK RA00011 CV. RAHAYU SENTOSA ``` so the conversion to unicode appears to be successful ``` sjM.to_excel(path + '.xls') Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\pandas\core\frame.py", line 1197, in to_excel excel_writer.save() File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\pandas\io\excel.py", line 595, in save return self.book.save(self.path) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\Workbook.py", line 662, in save doc.save(filename, self.get_biff_data()) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\Workbook.py", line 637, in get_biff_data shared_str_table = self.__sst_rec() File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\Workbook.py", line 599, in __sst_rec return self.__sst.get_biff_record() File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\BIFFRecords.py", line 76, in get_biff_record self._add_to_sst(s) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\BIFFRecords.py", line 91, in _add_to_sst u_str = upack2(s, self.encoding) File "c:\Anaconda\Lib\site-packages\xlwt\UnicodeUtils.py", line 50, in upack2 us = unicode(s, encoding) UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc2 in position 22: ordinal not in range(128) ``` - Why does it fails, even though the conversion to unicode appears to be successful ? - How can i work around this issue to export that dataframe to excel ? @Jeff Thanks for showing me the right direction steps used : install xlsxwriter (not bundled with pandas) ``` sjM.to_excel(path + '.xlsx', sheet_name='Sheet1', engine='xlsxwriter') ```