Convert .xlsx to .txt with python? or format .txt file to fix columns indentation?

Question

I have an excel file with many rows/columns and when I convert the file directly from .xlsx to .txt with excel, the file ends up with a weird indentation (the columns are not perfectly aligned like in an excel file) and due to some requirements, I really need them to be.

So, is there a better way to write from excel to txt using python? or format the txt file so the columns perfectly align?

I found this code in a previous question but I am getting the following error:

TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'

Code:

import xlrd
import csv

# open the output csv
with open('my.csv', 'wb') as myCsvfile:
    # define a writer
    wr = csv.writer(myCsvfile, delimiter="\t")

    # open the xlsx file 
    myfile = xlrd.open_workbook('myfile.xlsx')
    # get a sheet
    mysheet = myfile.sheet_by_index(0)

    # write the rows
    for rownum in range(mysheet.nrows):
        wr.writerow(mysheet.row_values(rownum))

Answer 1

is there a better way to write from excel to txt using python?

I'm not sure if it's a better way, but you could write the contents of xlsx file to txt this way:

import pandas as pd

with open('test.txt', 'w') as file:
    pd.read_excel('test.xlsx').to_string(file, index=False)

---

Edit:

to convert date column to a desired format, you could try the following:

with open('test.txt', 'w') as file:
    df = pd.read_excel('test.xlsx')
    df['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['date']).dt.strftime('%Y%m%d')
    df.to_string(file, index=False, na_rep='')

Answer 2

The problem lies in this row:

with open('my.csv', 'wb') as myCsvfile:

' wb ' suggests you will be writing bytes, but in reality, you will be writing regular characters. Change it to ' w '. Perhaps the best practice would be to also use with block for Excel file:

import xlrd
import csv

# open the output csv
with open('my.csv', 'w') as myCsvfile:
    # define a writer
    wr = csv.writer(myCsvfile, delimiter="\t")

    # open the xlsx file 
    with xlrd.open_workbook('myfile.xlsx') as myXlsxfile:
        # get a sheet
        mysheet = myXlsxfile.sheet_by_index(0)
        # write the rows
        for rownum in range(mysheet.nrows):
            wr.writerow(mysheet.row_values(rownum))

Answer 3

import pandas as pd

read_file = pd.read_excel (r'your excel file name.xlsx', sheet_name='your sheet name')
read_file.to_csv (r'Path to store the txt file\File name.txt', index = None, header=True)