Errors if an xlsx file has blank rows in the beginning….

[tester_V]

Greetings!
This is my first try using Pandas.
The sniped below works file if the files(.XLSX) do not have blank lines in the beginning.
I thought by using 'dropna' I'll fix the problem but it does not:

exlf = exlf.dropna(axis = 0, how = 'all')

Snipped:

import pandas as pd

exlf = pd.read_excel('C:/01/XLS_Files/SHORT_2.xlsx')
exlf = exlf.dropna(axis = 0, how = 'all')
#print(f" Blank Row Removed.. {exlf}")
four_col = exlf.iloc[: , [0,4,9,17]].copy()    # <--- Filtering 4 Columns
#print('\n. Only 4(Four) Columns \n :',four_col) 

filtered_l = four_col[(four_col['VR Site'] =='ORVCC') & (four_col['VR Duration(Days)'] >=449)]
print(filtered_l)

Any help is appreciated.