How do I expand the output display to see more columns of a Pandas DataFrame?

Question

Is there a way to widen the display of output in either interactive or script-execution mode?

Specifically, I am using the describe() function on a Pandas DataFrame. When the DataFrame is five columns (labels) wide, I get the descriptive statistics that I want. However, if the DataFrame has any more columns, the statistics are suppressed and something like this is returned:

>> Index: 8 entries, count to max
>> Data columns:
>> x1          8  non-null values
>> x2          8  non-null values
>> x3          8  non-null values
>> x4          8  non-null values
>> x5          8  non-null values
>> x6          8  non-null values
>> x7          8  non-null values

The "8" value is given whether there are 6 or 7 columns. What does the "8" refer to?

I have already tried dragging the IDLE window larger, as well as increasing the "Configure IDLE" width options, to no avail.

My purpose in using Pandas and describe() is to avoid using a second program like Stata to do basic data manipulation and investigation.

Solution 1

Update: Pandas 0.23.4 onwards

This is not necessary. Pandas autodetects the size of your terminal window if you set pd.options.display.width = 0. (For older versions see at bottom.)

pandas.set_printoptions(...) is deprecated. Instead, use pandas.set_option(optname, val), or equivalently pd.options.<opt.hierarchical.name> = val. Like:

import pandas as pd
pd.set_option('display.max_rows', 500)
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', 500)
pd.set_option('display.width', 1000)

Here is the help for set_option:

set_option(pat,value) - Sets the value of the specified option

Available options:
display.[chop_threshold, colheader_justify, column_space, date_dayfirst,
         date_yearfirst, encoding, expand_frame_repr, float_format, height,
         line_width, max_columns, max_colwidth, max_info_columns, max_info_rows,
         max_rows, max_seq_items, mpl_style, multi_sparse, notebook_repr_html,
         pprint_nest_depth, precision, width]
mode.[sim_interactive, use_inf_as_null]

Parameters
----------
pat - str/regexp which should match a single option.

Note: partial matches are supported for convenience, but unless you use the
full option name (e.g., *x.y.z.option_name*), your code may break in future
versions if new options with similar names are introduced.

value - new value of option.

Returns
-------
None

Raises
------
KeyError if no such option exists

display.chop_threshold: [default: None] [currently: None]
: float or None
        if set to a float value, all float values smaller then the given threshold
        will be displayed as exactly 0 by repr and friends.
display.colheader_justify: [default: right] [currently: right]
: 'left'/'right'
        Controls the justification of column headers. used by DataFrameFormatter.
display.column_space: [default: 12] [currently: 12]No description available.

display.date_dayfirst: [default: False] [currently: False]
: boolean
        When True, prints and parses dates with the day first, eg 20/01/2005
display.date_yearfirst: [default: False] [currently: False]
: boolean
        When True, prints and parses dates with the year first, e.g., 2005/01/20
display.encoding: [default: UTF-8] [currently: UTF-8]
: str/unicode
        Defaults to the detected encoding of the console.
        Specifies the encoding to be used for strings returned by to_string,
        these are generally strings meant to be displayed on the console.
display.expand_frame_repr: [default: True] [currently: True]
: boolean
        Whether to print out the full DataFrame repr for wide DataFrames
        across multiple lines, `max_columns` is still respected, but the output will
        wrap-around across multiple "pages" if it's width exceeds `display.width`.
display.float_format: [default: None] [currently: None]
: callable
        The callable should accept a floating point number and return
        a string with the desired format of the number. This is used
        in some places like SeriesFormatter.
        See core.format.EngFormatter for an example.
display.height: [default: 60] [currently: 1000]
: int
        Deprecated.
        (Deprecated, use `display.height` instead.)

display.line_width: [default: 80] [currently: 1000]
: int
        Deprecated.
        (Deprecated, use `display.width` instead.)

display.max_columns: [default: 20] [currently: 500]
: int
        max_rows and max_columns are used in __repr__() methods to decide if
        to_string() or info() is used to render an object to a string.  In case
        python/IPython is running in a terminal this can be set to 0 and Pandas
        will correctly auto-detect the width the terminal and swap to a smaller
        format in case all columns would not fit vertically. The IPython notebook,
        IPython qtconsole, or IDLE do not run in a terminal and hence it is not
        possible to do correct auto-detection.
        'None' value means unlimited.
display.max_colwidth: [default: 50] [currently: 50]
: int
        The maximum width in characters of a column in the repr of
        a Pandas data structure. When the column overflows, a "..."
        placeholder is embedded in the output.
display.max_info_columns: [default: 100] [currently: 100]
: int
        max_info_columns is used in DataFrame.info method to decide if
        per column information will be printed.
display.max_info_rows: [default: 1690785] [currently: 1690785]
: int or None
        max_info_rows is the maximum number of rows for which a frame will
        perform a null check on its columns when repr'ing To a console.
        The default is 1,000,000 rows. So, if a DataFrame has more
        1,000,000 rows there will be no null check performed on the
        columns and thus the representation will take much less time to
        display in an interactive session. A value of None means always
        perform a null check when repr'ing.
display.max_rows: [default: 60] [currently: 500]
: int
        This sets the maximum number of rows Pandas should output when printing
        out various output. For example, this value determines whether the repr()
        for a dataframe prints out fully or just a summary repr.
        'None' value means unlimited.
display.max_seq_items: [default: None] [currently: None]
: int or None

        when pretty-printing a long sequence, no more then `max_seq_items`
        will be printed. If items are ommitted, they will be denoted by the addition
        of "..." to the resulting string.

        If set to None, the number of items to be printed is unlimited.
display.mpl_style: [default: None] [currently: None]
: bool

        Setting this to 'default' will modify the rcParams used by matplotlib
        to give plots a more pleasing visual style by default.
        Setting this to None/False restores the values to their initial value.
display.multi_sparse: [default: True] [currently: True]
: boolean
        "sparsify" MultiIndex display (don't display repeated
        elements in outer levels within groups)
display.notebook_repr_html: [default: True] [currently: True]
: boolean
        When True, IPython notebook will use html representation for
        Pandas objects (if it is available).
display.pprint_nest_depth: [default: 3] [currently: 3]
: int
        Controls the number of nested levels to process when pretty-printing
display.precision: [default: 7] [currently: 7]
: int
        Floating point output precision (number of significant digits). This is
        only a suggestion
display.width: [default: 80] [currently: 1000]
: int
        Width of the display in characters. In case python/IPython is running in
        a terminal this can be set to None and Pandas will correctly auto-detect the
        width.
        Note that the IPython notebook, IPython qtconsole, or IDLE do not run in a
        terminal and hence it is not possible to correctly detect the width.
mode.sim_interactive: [default: False] [currently: False]
: boolean
        Whether to simulate interactive mode for purposes of testing
mode.use_inf_as_null: [default: False] [currently: False]
: boolean
        True means treat None, NaN, INF, -INF as null (old way),
        False means None and NaN are null, but INF, -INF are not null
        (new way).
Call def:   pd.set_option(self, *args, **kwds)

---

Older version information. Much of this has been deprecated.

As @bmu mentioned, Pandas auto detects (by default) the size of the display area, a summary view will be used when an object repr does not fit on the display. You mentioned resizing the IDLE window, to no effect. If you do print df.describe().to_string() does it fit on the IDLE window?

The terminal size is determined by pandas.util.terminal.get_terminal_size() (deprecated and removed), this returns a tuple containing the (width, height) of the display. Does the output match the size of your IDLE window? There might be an issue (there was one before when running a terminal in Emacs).

Note that it is possible to bypass the autodetect, pandas.set_printoptions(max_rows=200, max_columns=10) will never switch to summary view if number of rows, columns does not exceed the given limits.

---

The 'max_colwidth' option helps in seeing untruncated form of each column.

Solution 2

Try this:

pd.set_option('display.expand_frame_repr', False)

From the documentation:

display.expand_frame_repr : boolean

Whether to print out the full DataFrame repr for wide DataFrames across multiple lines, max_columns is still respected, but the output will wrap-around across multiple “pages” if it’s width exceeds display.width. [default: True] [currently: True]

See: pandas.set_option.

Solution 3

If you want to set options temporarily to display one large DataFrame, you can use option_context:

with pd.option_context('display.max_rows', None, 'display.max_columns', None):
    print (df)

Option values are restored automatically when you exit the with block.

Solution 4

Only using these three lines worked for me:

pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None)
pd.set_option('display.expand_frame_repr', False)
pd.set_option('max_colwidth', -1)

It was for Anaconda, Python 3.6.5, Pandas 0.23.0, and Visual Studio Code 1.26.

Solution 5

Set the column maximum width using:

pd.set_option('max_colwidth', 800)

This particular statement sets the maximum width to 800 pixels per column.

View more solutions

Comments

[MogaGennis]

Here is the user guide 'options and settings' from pandas with examples you are looking for.

[beets]

I prefer to use the max_columns method mentioned by lodagro, but I'm glad you mentioned the precision keyword since that will help clean up the stats that are displayed. Thanks!

[Wouter Overmeire]

Tried myself and get the same with IDLE, works fine with pylab. I raised an issue for this.

[Frozen Flame]

display.height: deprecated, use display.height instead... I'm in dead loop.

[unutbu]

Nowadays options can also be set as assignments to attributes of pd.options, e.g. pd.options.display.max_rows = 999

[zbyszek]

This one works for me. It seems that pandas miscalculates the output width for some reason, and breaks columns unnecessarily.

[Greg M. Krsak]

The 'display.height' property is deprecated.

[Matthias Fripp]

@wouter-overmeire says that pandas does this automatically, but that doesn't seem to be the case, at least not with 0.18.0. However, if you use pd.set_option('display.width', None) in a terminal, "pandas will correctly auto-detect the width".

[Melroy van den Berg]

Exactly! It doesn't do it by default. Setting it on None, it just ignore the width at all. Maybe it's a bug in Pandas or maybe it has to do with the gnome terminal..? Thanks Wilfred Hughes!

[John Zwinck]

@mfripp: display.width=None is treated as "unlimited" not "auto." Meaning it will be up to your terminal program to wrap long lines--typically with ugly results.

[Matthias Fripp]

@john-zwinck: I have to disagree. In the OS X Terminal, this adapts correctly, i.e., shows enough columns to fill the window width, then starts a new row below, where it shows more columns: import pandas as pd; pd.set_option('display.width', None); pd.DataFrame(1.00001, index=range(10), columns=range(100)). What environment are you working in?

[Matthias Fripp]

@john-swinck: The command above automatically adjusts the display width on Ubuntu 15.04, accessed via SSH from a couple of different terminal programs on my Mac. I haven't tried it from the Ubuntu desktop itself, but this suggests the problem is between your terminal app and pandas, not inherent to pandas or Linux.

[Melroy van den Berg]

You could also set max_* to None: pd.set_option('display.max_rows', None) pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None)

[BhishanPoudel]

AttributeError: module 'pandas.util' has no attribute 'terminal'

[Bruno Feroleto]

In order to set no limits, None can be used (instead of 999, etc.).

[azizj]

with pd.option_context('display.max_rows', None, 'display.max_columns', None): print(energy) didn't work. It did not change the number of columns I wanted to see. However, Wouter Overmeiere's solution did work.

[jezrael]

But there is difference, need some number like -1 or 500, not None.

[azizj]

Using -1 crashes, and 500 did not do anything either

[jezrael]

Hmmm, then I have no idea :(

[Greg Sadetsky]

This worked for me, thank you! I'm using Pandas 0.22.0 (latest as of Feb 8 2018) using the built-in Terminal app on OS X 10.11.6

[Peter Leimbigler]

Scrolling down in descending vote order, this is the first answer that worked for me to get pandas to not truncate the plaintext output of DataFrames. (pandas 0.22, iTerm2 3.0.13, OS X 10.12).

[SebMa]

@BhishanPoudel You can do this instead : pd.options.display.width = None

[Ajay]

@BhishanPoudel This answer is a few years old, and I ran into the same problem as you. As of writing this, using pandas version 0.23.1, the module is now pd.io.formats.terminal.get_terminal_size()

[BallpointBen]

Surely the context manager approach is superior, as it restores the initial values afterward.

[devinbost]

This is the only one that worked for me for Pandas 0.23.2.

[Mike Williamson]

You may want to use the option_context so that the option changes are local to the thing you're working with. This prevents accidentally printing out 400 pages of junk on your next call to .head() or whatever.

[citynorman]

I literally have to do this every day... Is there a way to set this globally somewhere?

[cmo]

How come you didn't have to specify it as display.max_colwidth? That is how it is listed in the documentation. I agree that only max_colwidth works and is shorter to write, but I was surprised.

[William Pourmajidi]

You just need these two: (Check the above example) import pandas as pd pd.set_option('display.max_columns', 100) pd.set_option('display.width', 1000)

[Ben]

display.height is gone. Using display.max_rows is sufficient. I will update the answer accordingly.

[bluenote10]

+1 for suggesting a context manager, but -1 for the max_rows value ;). Setting 'display.max_rows' to -1 seems to mess up the formatting completely (for my data no crash, but it prints certain rows multiple times now).

[Jarad]

@citynorman see pandas\core\config_init.py to permanently set it.

[user3226167]

Also np.set_printoptions(linewidth = 120) if you print numpy array

[Mostafa Ghadimi]

Hi Wilfred, I have faced with the following error using version 3.7.4 of python: AttributeError: module 'pandas.util' has no attribute 'terminal'

[David García Bodego]

Welcome to SO! When you post a new answer to a question and there are some more answers, try to show the Pros. There is still one answer pd.set_option('display.max_columns', 0) Which ones are the benefits of yours?

[Eric Leschinski]

All the more upvoted posts above use properties that are renamed and or disabled in the newest versions of pandas. All the 800 upvotes up there belong here. The pipy/pypi cheese shop sketch naming just clicked.

[Carl Parker]

I was not able to get pandas.util.terminal.get_terminal_size() to work, but IPython.utils.terminal.get_terminal_size() did work--inside PyCharm. In a Terminal window, os.get_terminal_size() works.

[Louis Maddox]

Just to add my little usage note: I paired this with the top secret built-in pager (!) in Python's standard library pydoc.pager, which lets you view a wide pandas DataFrame if you set the PAGER env variable to less -S. I thought it needed max_colwidth set to None too but on closer inspection the above answer works just fine :—) There is a weird bug where you need to page exactly one column to the right to get a very wide DF to display without wrapping, not sure if that can be fixed with pandas options context settings though.

[Elder Druid]

pd.set_option('max_colwidth', 100) if you want to specify a max-width

[Andreas Klintberg]

Newer versions of Pandas now take None argument for no max colwidth instead of -1

[lys]

This actually worked perfectly for me in vs_code

[Shtefan]

It helped me to get pandas working correctly with git bash. pd.set_option('display.width', 0). Without the parameter, pandas could not determine window size.

[Peter Mortensen]

An explanation would be in order. E.g., how does that answer the question "Is there a way to widen the display of output in either interactive or script-execution mode?"

[TheEconomist]

Worked in Google colab too!

[Francisco C]

With Anaconda I found config_init.py under C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\Lib\site-packages\pandas\core. Additionally, I had to run the text editor as Administrator in order to save changes to the file.

[Gergely M]

The correct syntax would be: pd.set_option('max_colwidth', None) Reason: FutureWarning: Passing a negative integer is deprecated in version 1.0 and will not be supported in future version. Instead, use None to not limit the column width.

[Corey Levinson]

I work fulltime, this is my most-viewed StackExchange answer. I come here at least once a week. Never bothered to memorize it. But after years of coming here, I want to say: Thank you!

[Ghost]

Dude, i've been looking for this damn command for MONTHS!!!! Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!