UnicodePython 3: EncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xe4'

Question

I am trying to send some emails with pandas from an excel-file. I have this error for over a week now and even after hours of searching through SO, google, forums and so on, I just can't come u with an answer to fix the problem.

Here is the code:

import pandas as pd
import smtplib

your_name = "myname"
your_email = "mymail"
your_password = "mypw"


server = smtplib.SMTP_SSL('smtp.gmail.com', 465)
server.ehlo()
server.login(your_email, your_password)

# Read the file
email_list = pd.read_excel("myfile.xlsx")

# Get all the Names, Email Addreses, Subjects and Messages
all_emails = email_list['Email']
all_messages = email_list['Text']

# Loop through the emails
for idx in range(len(all_emails)):

    # Get each records name, email, subject and message
    email = all_emails[idx]
    message = all_messages[idx]

    # Create the email to send
    full_email = ("From: {0} <{1}>\n"
                  "To: <{2}>\n"
                  "Subject: My_Subject_Title\n\n"
                  "{3}"
                  .format(your_name, your_email, email, message))

    # In the email field, you can add multiple other emails if you want
    # all of them to receive the same text
    try:
        server.sendmail(your_email, [email], full_email)
        print('Email to {} successfully sent!\n\n'.format(email))
    except Exception as e:
        print('Email to {} could not be sent :( because {}\n\n'.format(email, str(e)))

server.close()

I am getting the error:

'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xe4'

So obviously the error is caused by some european letters inside my excel file. What I tryied (along several others ways) was to encode the file:

email_list = pd.read_excel("myfile.xlsx", encoding=("utf-8"))
>>> TypeError: read_excel() got an unexpected keyword argument 'encoding'

or:

email_list = pd.read_excel("myfile.xlsx")
email_list.encode("utf-8")
>>> AttributeError: 'DataFrame' object has no attribute 'encode'

Non if it seems to work.

I'm happy if someone can help me out in what I`m doing wrong. Very new to python and these are my first real trys to implement some actual work-related problems.

Thanks a lot in advance!