How to write a cell with multiple columns in xlwt?
As far as I can tell, this isn't documented - you have to read the source code to find it. There are two methods on the Worksheet
class to do this, write_merge
and merge
. merge
takes existing cells and merges them, while write_merge
writes a label (just like write
) and then does the same stuff merge
does.
Both take the cells to merge as r1, r2, c1, c2
, and accept an optional style
parameter.
From your example, this would be the simplest call:
sheet.write_merge(0, 0, 0, 1, 'Long Cell')sheet.write(1, 0, 1)sheet.write(1, 1, 2)
To be more explicit about how the call works:
top_row = 0bottom_row = 0left_column = 0right_column = 1sheet.write_merge(top_row, bottom_row, left_column, right_column, 'Long Cell')
Alternatively, using merge
:
sheet.write(top_row, left_column, 'Long Cell')sheet.merge(top_row, bottom_row, left_column, right_column)
merge
has some comments in the source pointing out potential problems:
# Problems: (1) style to be used should be existing style of # the top-left cell, not an arg. # (2) should ensure that any previous data value in # non-top-left cells is nobbled. # Note: if a cell is set by a data record then later # is referenced by a [MUL]BLANK record, Excel will blank # out the cell on the screen, but OOo & Gnu will not # blank it out. Need to do something better than writing # multiple records. In the meantime, avoid this method and use # write_merge() instead.
But it would be fine for a simple case like this.