Thought i should add here, that if you want to access rows or columns to loop through them, you do this:
import pandas as pd
# open the file
xlsx = pd.ExcelFile("PATH\FileName.xlsx")
# get the first sheet as an object
sheet1 = xlsx.parse(0)
# get the first column as a list you can loop through
# where the is 0 in the code below change to the row or column number you want
column = sheet1.icol(0).real
# get the first row as a list you can loop through
row = sheet1.irow(0).real
Edit:
The methods icol(i) and irow(i) are deprecated now. You can use sheet1.iloc[:,i] to get the i-th col and sheet1.iloc[i,:] to get the i-th row.