python - Apply styles while exporting to 'xlsx' in pandas with XlsxWriter

Question

I use the .to_excel method of pandas to write a DataFrame as an Excel workbook. This works nice even for multi-index DataFrames as index cells become merged. When using the pure XlsxWriter I can apply formats to cells what also works nice.

However I couldn't find a way to do the same with the pandas method. Just passing a dict with column names and styles would be most intuitive.

Is there any way to do so?

Answer 1

Is there any way to do so

Currently no. There isn't a formatting mechanism like that in Pandas for formatting the Excel output (apart from a few hard-coded formats).

However, even if it was XlsxWriter doesn't currently support formatting cells after data is added. It is on TODO list.

Update:

As a workaround I recommend getting a reference to the underlying workbook and worksheet and overwriting any cells that you wish to be formatted with the same data from the Pandas dataframe and a XlsxWriter format.

See Working with Python Pandas and XlsxWriter.