ENH: Add decimal parameter to read_excel (#44317)

Author: lithomas1

doc/source/whatsnew/v1.4.0.rst

@@ -182,6 +182,7 @@ Other enhancements
 - Added :meth:`.ExponentialMovingWindow.sum` (:issue:`13297`)
 - :meth:`Series.str.split` now supports a ``regex`` argument that explicitly specifies whether the pattern is a regular expression. Default is ``None`` (:issue:`43563`, :issue:`32835`, :issue:`25549`)
 - :meth:`DataFrame.dropna` now accepts a single label as ``subset`` along with array-like (:issue:`41021`)
+- :meth:`read_excel` now accepts a ``decimal`` argument that allow the user to specify the decimal point when parsing string columns to numeric (:issue:`14403`)
 - :meth:`.GroupBy.mean` now supports `Numba <http://numba.pydata.org/>`_ execution with the ``engine`` keyword (:issue:`43731`)
 
 .. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

pandas/io/excel/_base.py

@@ -234,6 +234,14 @@
     this parameter is only necessary for columns stored as TEXT in Excel,
     any numeric columns will automatically be parsed, regardless of display
     format.
+decimal : str, default '.'
+    Character to recognize as decimal point for parsing string columns to numeric.
+    Note that this parameter is only necessary for columns stored as TEXT in Excel,
+    any numeric columns will automatically be parsed, regardless of display
+    format.(e.g. use ',' for European data).
+
+    .. versionadded:: 1.4.0
+
 comment : str, default None
     Comments out remainder of line. Pass a character or characters to this
     argument to indicate comments in the input file. Any data between the
@@ -356,6 +364,7 @@ def read_excel(
     parse_dates=False,
     date_parser=None,
     thousands=None,
+    decimal=".",
     comment=None,
     skipfooter=0,
     convert_float=None,
@@ -394,6 +403,7 @@ def read_excel(
             parse_dates=parse_dates,
             date_parser=date_parser,
             thousands=thousands,
+            decimal=decimal,
             comment=comment,
             skipfooter=skipfooter,
             convert_float=convert_float,
@@ -498,6 +508,7 @@ def parse(
         parse_dates=False,
         date_parser=None,
         thousands=None,
+        decimal=".",
         comment=None,
         skipfooter=0,
         convert_float=None,
@@ -624,6 +635,7 @@ def parse(
                     parse_dates=parse_dates,
                     date_parser=date_parser,
                     thousands=thousands,
+                    decimal=decimal,
                     comment=comment,
                     skipfooter=skipfooter,
                     usecols=usecols,

pandas/tests/io/data/excel/test_decimal.ods

@@ -1289,6 +1289,19 @@ def test_ignore_chartsheets_by_int(self, request, read_ext):
         ):
             pd.read_excel("chartsheet" + read_ext, sheet_name=1)
 
+    def test_euro_decimal_format(self, request, read_ext):
+        # copied from read_csv
+        result = pd.read_excel("test_decimal" + read_ext, decimal=",", skiprows=1)
+        expected = DataFrame(
+            [
+                [1, 1521.1541, 187101.9543, "ABC", "poi", 4.738797819],
+                [2, 121.12, 14897.76, "DEF", "uyt", 0.377320872],
+                [3, 878.158, 108013.434, "GHI", "rez", 2.735694704],
+            ],
+            columns=["Id", "Number1", "Number2", "Text1", "Text2", "Number3"],
+        )
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
 
 class TestExcelFileRead:
     @pytest.fixture(autouse=True)