How to get read excel data into an array with python

I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you say array, but if you mean into a matrix, might you be looking for:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_excel([path here])
df.as_matrix()

This returns a numpy.ndarray type.

This task is super easy in Pandas these days.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel('file_name_here.xlsx', sheet_name='Sheet1')

or

df = pd.read_csv('file_name_here.csv')

This returns a pandas.DataFrame object which is very powerful for performing operations by column, row, over an entire df, or over individual items with iterrows. Not to mention slicing in different ways.