How to drop Unnamed column in Pandas DataFrame

Through this Python Pandas tutorial, We will cover topics like how to drop Unnamed column in Pandas DataFrame in Python.

But knowing Why to drop the Unnamed columns of a Pandas DataFrame will help you have a strong base in Pandas. We will also know when this ‘unnamed’ column is getting attached to DataFrame in Python.

Let us get answers to all these questions of Why, When, and How, through this Python Pandas tutorial.

Moreover, We will also cover the following topics:

• What is the ‘Unnamed column’ in Pandas DataFrame?
• Methods to remove the Unnamed column from a Pandas DataFrame
  • Remove the Unnamed column while exporting DataFrame to the CSV file
  • Remove the Unnamed column after exporting it to the CSV file
  • Remove the Unnamed column after exporting it to the CSV file using the drop() method in Python
• Why drop the Unnamed columns of the Pandas DataFrame in Python?
• When to drop the Unnamed columns of the Pandas DataFrame in Python?

What is the ‘Unnamed column’ in Pandas DataFrame

When we create a Pandas DataFrame and export it to a ‘CSV’ file then an extra column is getting added to the existing DataFrame which will increase the complexity. That extra column which is of no use for further analysis is nothing but the ‘unnamed column’. To dive into this, Let us create a Pandas DataFrame first.

• In the below code, we have created a travelers group that consists of travelers’ names, ages, and countries they are from.
• Later we are exporting our DataFrame ‘Data’ to a CSV file by calling the function ‘to_csv’ and naming our new CSV file as ‘Travellers’ in Python.
• Then We are reading the CSV file i.e ‘Travellers’ DataFrame by calling the method ‘pd.read_csv()’.

#Import the necessary libraries
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

#Create Pandas DataFrame
data_dict={'Name':['Nick','Stephen','David','Jonas','Giga','Justin','James','Robert'],
           'Location': ['USA','UK','Australia','USA','USA','Australia','UK','USA'],
           'Age':[24,34,42,18,27,52,21,35]}

Data=pd.DataFrame(data_dict)

#Export the DataFrame to csv file
Data.to_csv('Travellers')

#Print the Pandas DataFrame that is exported
Travellers_data=pd.read_csv('Travellers')
Travellers_data

In the below output image, we can observe that along with the input data we have given in the Pandas DataFrame, an extra column that is of no use is also getting added i.e ‘Unnamed :0’ column.

Here we have created a Pandas DataFrame to perform the task of removing Unnamed columns from Pandas DataFrame in Python.

Remove the Unnamed column of a Pandas DataFrame

There are many methods to remove the Unnamed column of a Pandas DataFrame.Here is the list of methods:

Method 1: Remove the Unnamed column while exporting DataFrame to the CSV file

• The no-name column is automatically created when the file is exported and appears with the name Unnamed: 0.
• To avoid the creation of no name or Unnamed: 0 columns We have to set the False value to the Index parameter while exporting the DataFrame to CSV.
• This is how the inbuilt function looks like DataFrame.to_csv('exported_file.csv', index=False').

#Import the necessary libraries
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

#Create Pandas DataFrame
data_dict={'Name':['Nick','Stephen','David','Jonas','Giga','Justin','James','Robert'],
           'Location': ['USA','UK','Australia','USA','USA','Australia','UK','USA'],
           'Age':[24,34,42,18,27,52,21,35]}

Data=pd.DataFrame(data_dict)

#Export the DataFrame to csv file
Data.to_csv('Travellers',index=False)

#Print the Pandas DataFrame that is exported
Travellers_data=pd.read_csv('Travellers')
Travellers_data

In the below output image, we can observe that no Unnamed Column is added to the Pandas DataFrame while exporting it to a CSV file. Since we have set index=False while exporting it to CSV.

This is how we can remove the Unnamed column while exporting the Pandas DataFrame to the CSV file in Python.

Method 2: Remove the Unnamed column after exporting it to the CSV file

• In the below code, we have created a Pandas DataFrame and exported it to a CSV file, and when we try to read the exported CSV file there is an Unnamed column that gets added to the existing DataFrame.
• The code “Travellers_data.columns.str.contains(‘^Unnamed’)” will fetch the columns whose column name is ‘Unnamed’ in the Pandas DataFrame in Python.
• The code ”Travellers_data.loc[:, ~Travellers_data.columns.str.contains(‘^Unnamed’)]” will remove the ‘Unnamed column’ from the existing Pandas DataFrame and fetch all the rest of the data in Python.

#Import the necessary libraries
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

#Create Pandas DataFrame
data_dict={'Name':['Nick','Stephen','David','Jonas','Giga','Justin','James','Robert'],
           'Location': ['USA','UK','Australia','USA','USA','Australia','UK','USA'],
           'Age':[24,34,42,18,27,52,21,35]}

Data=pd.DataFrame(data_dict)

#Export the DataFrame to csv file
Data.to_csv('Travellers')

#Print the Pandas DataFrame that is exported
Travellers_data=pd.read_csv('Travellers')

#drop the column that contains "Unnamed" in column name
Travellers_data = Travellers_data.loc[:, ~Travellers_data.columns.str.contains('^Unnamed')]

# DataFrame after dropping the Unnamed column
Travellers_data

In the below output image, we can observe that no Unnamed Column is present in the Pandas DataFrame because we have written (~Travellers_data.columns.str.contains(‘^Unnamed’)) in the code not to include the columns that have column name ‘Unnamed’ in Python.

This is how we can remove the Unnamed column after exporting it to the CSV file in Python.

Method 3: Remove the Unnamed column after exporting it to the CSV file using the drop() method

• In the below code, we have created a Pandas DataFrame and exported it to a CSV file, and when we try to read the exported CSV file there is an Unnamed column that gets added to the existing DataFrame.
• The code “Travellers_data.drop(“Unnamed: 0″, axis=1)” will drop the columns whose name is ‘Unnamed’ in the Pandas DataFrame “Travellers_data” in Python.

#Import the necessary libraries
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd

#Create Pandas DataFrame
data_dict={'Name':['Nick','Stephen','David','Jonas','Giga','Justin','James','Robert'],
           'Location': ['USA','UK','Australia','USA','USA','Australia','UK','USA'],
           'Age':[24,34,42,18,27,52,21,35]}

Data=pd.DataFrame(data_dict)

#Export the DataFrame to csv file
Data.to_csv('Travellers')

#Print the Pandas DataFrame that is exported
Travellers_data=pd.read_csv('Travellers')

#drop the column that contains "Unnamed" in column name
Travellers_data = Travellers_data.drop("Unnamed: 0", axis=1)

# DataFrame after dropping the Unnamed column
Travellers_data

In the below output image, we can observe that no Unnamed Column is present in the Pandas DataFrame ‘Travellers_data‘ because we have dropped it using the drop() method in Python.

This is how we can remove the Unnamed column from Pandas DataFrame after exporting it to the CSV file using the drop() method in Python.

Why drop the Unnamed columns of the Pandas DataFrame in Python

The Unnamed column will get attached to the existing Pandas DataFrame while exporting the DataFrame to CSV.

• The ‘Unnamed’ column that is getting appended to the Pandas DataFrame is of no use.
• And it simply increases the computation and dimension of the dataset.
• Memory is unnecessarily getting wasted because of the unwanted column that is getting added.
• Removing or dropping this Unnamed column helps in analyzing the dataset further in a proper way.

When to drop the Unnamed columns of the Pandas DataFrame in Python

The ‘Unnamed’ column is getting appended to the existing Pandas DataFrame while exporting it to a CSV file.

• We can drop the ‘Unnamed’ column of the DataFrame while exporting it to CSV i.e by passing the False value to the Index Parameter in Python.
• We can even drop the ‘Unnamed’ column of the Pandas DataFrame after exporting it to CSV using method2 or method3 [drop() function].

Conclusion

In this Python Pandas tutorial, we have covered all the different methods to drop or remove the ‘Unnamed’ columns of the existing Pandas DataFrame in Python.

And also through this Python tutorial, We will get to know :

• How to drop or remove the “Unnamed column” from Pandas DataFrame
• When to drop or remove the “Unnamed column” from Pandas DataFrame
• Why drop or remove the “Unnamed column” from Pandas DataFrame

We can also go through the following Python Pandas tutorials for a better understanding of Pandas in Python.

• Get column index from column name of Pandas DataFrame
• How to get Index values of Pandas DataFrames
• Drop non-numeric columns from pandas DataFrame