What Excel is
An Excel workbook is a zip archive of XML parts describing sheets, cells, formulas, styles and charts. The .xlsx extension is that format; .xls is the older binary one from before 2007.
Finance, operations and anyone who received a file from finance or operations.
What Pandas DataFrame is
Python that builds a pandas DataFrame from a dictionary of columns.
Data analysis and notebooks.
What changes when you convert Excel to Pandas DataFrame
Only the first sheet is read, and cells are read as the text Excel displays rather than the number underneath. That matters for dates: a cell showing 15/03/2026 arrives as that string, not as a serial number you would then have to decode.
The import line is included so the snippet runs as is. Turn type inference on and numeric columns arrive as numbers rather than strings, which is usually what you want in a DataFrame.
What carries over from Excel to Pandas DataFrame
One property of the Excel has no home in pandas, and it is worth knowing which before you convert.
pandas marks its header cells differently from its data cells, so the first row is written with that marker.
Anything visual in the Excel - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in pandas and is dropped. The values are what survives.
Both formats record types, so numbers, booleans and nulls survive as themselves rather than as text.