Excel to Table (10.2) Tool

New at ArcGIS 10.2 is the Excel to Table tool.. This tool is found under the conversion toolbox, and it a quick way to easily convert your Excel Workbooks (.xlsx files) and MS Excel 5.0/95 Workbook (.xls files) into geodatabase tables.

• Supports xlsx and xls file extensions
• First row is considered the field names, and can be renamed so a valid table is generated
• It assumes that each field contains uniform data types and the data is not mixed

ExcelToTable() takes the following inputs:

1. Input_Excel_File - MS Office Excel file path 
2. Output_table - export table name and path
3. Sheet (optional) - Name of the sheet to export.  If none is provide the 1st sheet will be exported

Sample:

import arcpy
from arcpy import env
if __name__ == '__main__':
    env.overwriteOutput = True
    xls_file = r"c:\temp\somedata.xls"  # supports xlsx and xls
    dest_gdb = env.scratchGDB
    arcpy.ExcelToTable_conversion(xls_file,
                        os.path.join(dest_gdb, "sheet"))

Pretty easy.  The biggest advantage I see with this tool is if you are in an environment where you cannot install 3rd party modules like xlrd.

Enjoy