How to set a variable to read multiple columns from an excel file using pandas in python

Question

I have been trying to set a variable to read multiple columns from an excel file using pandas but it keeps giving me errors, what am I doing wrong?

I have tried this:

import pandas

dataset = pandas.read_excel('dataset.xlsx')

features = ["B", "D", "E"]

x = dataset(columns=[features])

But this gave me an error saying:

 line 7, in <module>
    x = dataset(columns=[features])
TypeError: 'DataFrame' object is not callable

I also tried this:

import pandas

dataset = pandas.read_excel('dataset.xlsx')

features = ["B", "D", "E"]

x = dataset[[features]]

Which gave this error " raise:

 KeyError(f"None of [{key}] are in the [{axis_name}]")
KeyError: None of [Index([('B', 'D', 'E')], dtype='object')] are in the [columns]

What am I doing wrong? How can I fix this?

max_jump · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-05 12:12:28Z

1

You pass a list of lists (with length 1) instead of a list. Remove the additional [] around features:

x = dataset[features]

answered Sep 5, 2022 at 8:43

max_jump

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2 Comments

ah ok thanks, the first one still gives an error but the second one works. Thank you

You're right, that code didn't make sense. I've removed it and only kept the working line. Thanks!