How to drop one or multiple columns in Pandas Dataframe

Let’s discuss how to drop one or multiple columns in Pandas Dataframe. To Delete a column from a Pandas DataFrame or Drop one or more than one column from a DataFrame can be achieved in multiple ways. 

Create a simple Dataframe with dictionary of lists, say column names are A, B, C, D, E. In this article, we will cover 6 different methods to delete some columns from Pandas DataFrame.

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

df

Output:

Method 1: Drop Columns from a Dataframe using drop() method. 

Example 1: Remove specific single columns. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Remove column name 'A'
df.drop(['A'], axis=1)

Output:

Example 2: Remove specific multiple columns. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Remove two columns name is 'C' and 'D'
df.drop(['C', 'D'], axis=1)

# df.drop(columns =['C', 'D'])

Output:

Example 3: Remove columns based on column index. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Remove three columns as index base
df.drop(df.columns[[0, 4, 2]], axis=1, inplace=True)

df

Output:

Method 2: Drop Columns from a Dataframe using iloc[] and drop() method. 

Remove all columns between a specific column to another column. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd
# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Remove all columns between column index 1 to 3
df.drop(df.iloc[:, 1:3], inplace=True, axis=1)

df

Output:

Method 3: Drop Columns from a Dataframe using ix() and drop() method. 

Remove all columns between a specific column name to another column’s name. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Remove all columns between column name 'B' to 'D'
df.drop(df.ix[:, 'B':'D'].columns, axis=1)

Output:

Method 4: Drop Columns from a Dataframe using loc[] and drop() method. 

Remove all columns between a specific column name to another column’s name. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Remove all columns between column name 'B' to 'D'
df.drop(df.loc[:, 'B':'D'].columns, axis=1)

Output:

Note: Different loc() and iloc() is iloc() exclude last column range element.   

Method 5: Drop Columns from a Dataframe in an iterative way. 

Remove all columns between a specific column name to another column’s name. 

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
for col in df.columns:
    if 'A' in col:
        del df[col]

df

Output:

Method 6: Python dataframe.pop() method

Python3

# Import pandas package
import pandas as pd

# create a dictionary with five fields each
data = {
    'A': ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'A4', 'A5'],
    'B': ['B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4', 'B5'],
    'C': ['C1', 'C2', 'C3', 'C4', 'C5'],
    'D': ['D1', 'D2', 'D3', 'D4', 'D5'],
    'E': ['E1', 'E2', 'E3', 'E4', 'E5']}

# Convert the dictionary into DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)
df.pop('B')

df

Output:

A    C    D    E
0    A1    C1    D1    E1
1    A2    C2    D2    E2
2    A3    C3    D3    E3
3    A4    C4    D4    E4
4    A5    C5    D5    E5