How To Sort A Column In Excel Using Python

In this tutorial, we will learn how to sort a column in Excel using Python. We will be using the popular library Pandas to achieve this task. Pandas is widely used for data manipulation and analysis. It provides data structures and functions required to work with structured data seamlessly.

Step 1: Install Pandas

If you don’t have Pandas already installed, you can install it using pip. Open your command prompt or terminal and type the following command:

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pip install pandas

Step 2: Prepare the Excel file

For this tutorial, we will use a sample Excel file named “sample_data.xlsx” with the following columns and data:

Name      Age  Country
John        35    USA
Alice       28    UK
David       28    Australia
Charlie     22    USA

Save this file in your working directory.

Step 3: Read the Excel file using Pandas

We will start by importing the Pandas library and reading the Excel file into a DataFrame object. A DataFrame is a two-dimensional, size-mutable, and heterogeneous tabular data structure with labeled axes (rows and columns).

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import pandas as pd
 
file_name = "sample_data.xlsx"
data_frame = pd.read_excel(file_name)
print(data_frame)

This will output the following data:

      Name  Age    Country
0     John   35        USA
1    Alice   28         UK
2    David   28  Australia
3  Charlie   22        USA

Step 4: Sort the column

Now let’s sort the DataFrame based on the “Age” column in ascending order. We will use the sort_values function provided by Pandas.

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sorted_data_frame = data_frame.sort_values(by="Age")
print(sorted_data_frame)

This will output the sorted data:

      Name  Age    Country
3  Charlie   22        USA
1    Alice   28         UK
2    David   28  Australia
0     John   35        USA

Step 5: Save the sorted data to a new Excel file

Finally, let’s save the sorted data into a new Excel file named “sorted_data.xlsx”.

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sorted_file_name = "sorted_data.xlsx"
sorted_data_frame.to_excel(sorted_file_name, index=False)

This will create a new Excel file in your working directory with the sorted data.

Full Code

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import pandas as pd
 
file_name = "sample_data.xlsx"
data_frame = pd.read_excel(file_name)
 
sorted_data_frame = data_frame.sort_values(by="Age")
 
sorted_file_name = "sorted_data.xlsx"
sorted_data_frame.to_excel(sorted_file_name, index=False)

Output

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to sort a column in an Excel file using Python and Pandas. By following these steps, you can easily sort any column in your Excel sheet and save the sorted data into a new file.