diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index db19458..841e29e 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ pdfkit  # needs wkhtmltopdf: brew install Caskroom/cask/wkhtmltopdf
 pypandoc  # needs pandoc: brew install pandoc
 shellinford>=0.3.4
 xlsxwriter
-xlrd
+xlrd>=1.0.0,<2.0.0
 xvfbwrapper
 future>=0.16.0  # needed by pylint
 astropy
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 73573d1..1410139 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@
             'pdfkit',
             'pypandoc',
             'shellinford>=0.3.4',
-            'xlrd',
+            'xlrd>=1.0.0,<2.0.0',
             'xlsxwriter',
             'xvfbwrapper',
             'future>=0.16.0',  # needed by pylint