A sample code that traverse and show the content of the given .xls file

xls-traversal.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from xlrd import *

wb = open_workbook('sample.xls')
for sheet in wb.sheets():
    print 'Sheet: {0}'.format(sheet.name)
    for row in range(sheet.nrows):
        row_value = []
        for col in range(sheet.ncols):
            row_value.append(sheet.cell(row, col).value)
        print ','.join(row_value)