TST: skip tests if xlrd has lower than needed version

Author: jreback

pandas/io/tests/test_excel.py

@@ -808,11 +808,7 @@ def test_to_excel_styleconverter(self):
     #         self.assertTrue(ws.cell(maddr).merged)
     #     os.remove(filename)
     def test_excel_010_hemstring(self):
-        try:
-            import xlwt
-            import openpyxl
-        except ImportError:
-            raise nose.SkipTest
+        _skip_if_no_excelsuite()
 
         from pandas.util.testing import makeCustomDataframe as mkdf
         # ensure limited functionality in 0.10

pandas/tests/test_panel.py

@@ -1381,7 +1381,11 @@ def test_to_excel(self):
             path = '__tmp__.' + ext
             with ensure_clean(path) as path:
                 self.panel.to_excel(path)
-                reader = ExcelFile(path)
+                try:
+                    reader = ExcelFile(path)
+                except ImportError:
+                    raise nose.SkipTest
+                
                 for item, df in self.panel.iterkv():
                     recdf = reader.parse(str(item), index_col=0)
                     assert_frame_equal(df, recdf)