Broken behaviour on read_excel on 0.24.0

[LPugens]

Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

# Your code here
wget https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/files/2852618/file.xlsx
pip install pandas==0.23.4
>>import pandas as pd
>>df = pd.read_excel('file.xlsx', index_row=[0, 1, 2], header=[0, 1, 2])
>>print(df.columns.names)
pip uninstall pandas
pip install pandas==0.24.0
>>import pandas as pd
>>df = pd.read_excel('file.xlsx', index_row=[0, 1, 2], header=[0, 1, 2])
>>print(df.columns.names)

Problem description

The columns names are not identified by versions 0.24+.

Expected Output

Both print lines should print the same thing:
['top_level', 'middle_level', 'low_level']

Output of pd.show_versions()

[paste the output of pd.show_versions() here below this line]

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit: None
python: 3.7.1.final.0
python-bits: 64
OS: Windows
OS-release: 10
machine: AMD64
processor: AMD64 Family 23 Model 1 Stepping 1, AuthenticAMD
byteorder: little
LC_ALL: None
LANG: None
LOCALE: None.None

pandas: 0.23.4
pytest: None
pip: 18.1
setuptools: 40.6.2
Cython: None
numpy: 1.16.1
scipy: 1.2.1
pyarrow: None
xarray: None
IPython: None
sphinx: None
patsy: None
dateutil: 2.7.5
pytz: 2018.7
blosc: None
bottleneck: None
tables: None
numexpr: None
feather: None
matplotlib: 3.0.2
openpyxl: 2.5.12
xlrd: 1.1.0
xlwt: None
xlsxwriter: None
lxml: None
bs4: None
html5lib: None
sqlalchemy: 1.2.14
pymysql: None
psycopg2: None
jinja2: 2.10
s3fs: None
fastparquet: None
pandas_gbq: None
pandas_datareader: None

INSTALLED VERSIONS

commit: None
python: 3.7.1.final.0
python-bits: 64
OS: Windows
OS-release: 10
machine: AMD64
processor: AMD64 Family 23 Model 1 Stepping 1, AuthenticAMD
byteorder: little
LC_ALL: None
LANG: None
LOCALE: None.None

pandas: 0.24.0
pytest: None
pip: 18.1
setuptools: 40.6.2
Cython: None
numpy: 1.16.1
scipy: 1.2.1
pyarrow: None
xarray: None
IPython: None
sphinx: None
patsy: None
dateutil: 2.7.5
pytz: 2018.7
blosc: None
bottleneck: None
tables: None
numexpr: None
feather: None
matplotlib: 3.0.2
openpyxl: 2.5.12
xlrd: 1.1.0
xlwt: None
xlsxwriter: None
lxml.etree: None
bs4: None
html5lib: None
sqlalchemy: 1.2.14
pymysql: None
psycopg2: None
jinja2: 2.10
s3fs: None
fastparquet: None
pandas_gbq: None
pandas_datareader: None
gcsfs: None

[WillAyd]

There is no such parameter as index_row - are you looking for index_col=0 instead? That seems to get the behavior you are after

Outside of that this is actually expected behavior as a result of #23874. The prior behavior was incorrect because it was not respecting index_col=None being the default and treating the first column as the index without being explicitly stated

[jorisvandenbossche]

@LPugens is the answer of @WillAyd satisfying?

There is no such parameter as index_row

But the code above still runs ... We should probably not silently accept any kwarg here.

[LPugens]

@jorisvandenbossche yes, somehow my old code was running on luck.
The solution Offered by @WillAyd worked fine.
Thanks!