Issue with Formatting Columns in Pandas Output File

Question

I am working on a Python script using the Pandas library to process Paigo data files. My goal is to generate an output file PaigoPagos.xls that adheres to a specific format. To achieve this, I am using a format file named FormatImportationPayments.xls as a reference for column formatting.

The problem I am facing is that I need the columns N CLIENTE, N PRODUCTO, MONTO, and N RECIBO in the output file PaigoPagos.xls to be generated in text format, as defined in the FormatImportationPayments.xls file.

I am attaching the relevant part of my code for your reference:

# Code for processing files and generating the output file
# ...
# (Part of the code where columns N CLIENTE, N PRODUCTO, MONTO, and N RECIBO are generated)
# ...



# Save the output file
df_neotel_payments.to_excel('PaigoPayments<date>.xls', index=False, sheet_name='Sheet1')`

My question is: how can I ensure that the aforementioned columns are saved as text in the output file PaigoPayments.xls? I am using Python and Pandas to perform this process.

I appreciate any help you can provide! Thank you very much.

I have attempted to convert the columns to text format using the astype(str) method in Pandas. Here's the snippet I tried:

df_neotel_payments['N CLIENTE'] = df_neotel_payments['N CLIENTE'].astype(str) df_neotel_payments['N PRODUCTO'] = df_neotel_payments['N PRODUCTO'].astype(str) df_neotel_payments['MONTO'] = df_neotel_payments['MONTO'].astype(str) df_neotel_payments['N RECIBO'] = df_neotel_payments['N RECIBO'].astype(str)

However, this approach did not yield the desired results. I was expecting the columns in the output file to be formatted as text, but they still appear in numeric format. I also tried adjusting the Excel writer options, but it didn't resolve the issue. Any guidance on how to correctly format these columns as text in the output file would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The code is missing of managing your dataframe. Your code in the post seems correct to me. First check the column format:

print(df_neotel_payments.dtypes)

Then try using Series.astype() to convert the column to string I put the code of a column.

df_neotel_payments['N CLIENTE']=df_neotel_payments['N CLIENTE'].values.astype('string')

check the column format again

print(df_neotel_payments.dtypes)

I hope to be proved helpful