Convert spreadsheet number to column letter

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Method 1

start_index = 1   #  it can start either at 0 or at 1
letter = ''
while column_int > 25 + start_index:   
    letter += chr(65 + int((column_int-start_index)/26) - 1)
    column_int = column_int - (int((column_int-start_index)/26))*26
letter += chr(65 - start_index + (int(column_int)))

Method 2

The xlsxwriter library includes a conversion function, xlsxwriter.utility.xl_col_to_name(index) and is on github

here is a working example:

>>> import xlsxwriter 
>>> xlsxwriter.utility.xl_col_to_name(10)
'K'
>>> xlsxwriter.utility.xl_col_to_name(1)
'B'
>>> xlsxwriter.utility.xl_col_to_name(0)
'A'

Notice that it’s using zero-indexing.

Method 3

The openpyxl library includes the conversion function (amongst others) which you are looking for, get_column_letter:

>>> from openpyxl.utils.cell import get_column_letter
>>> get_column_letter(1)
'A'
>>> get_column_letter(10)
'J'
>>> get_column_letter(3423)
'EAQ'

Method 4

My recipe for this was inspired by another answer on arbitrary base conversion (https://stackoverflow.com/a/24763277/3163607)

import string

def n2a(n,b=string.ascii_uppercase):
   d, m = divmod(n,len(b))
   return n2a(d-1,b)+b[m] if d else b[m]

Example:

for i in range(23,30):
    print (i,n2a(i))

outputs

23 X
24 Y
25 Z
26 AA
27 AB
28 AC
29 AD

Method 5

Just for people still interest in this. The chosen answer by @Marius gives wrong outputs in some cases, as commented by @jspurim. Here is the my answer.

import string
def convertToTitle(num):
    title = ''
    alist = string.uppercase
    while num:
        mod = (num-1) % 26
        num = int((num - mod) / 26)  
        title += alist[mod]
    return title[::-1]

Method 6

Edited after some tough love from Meta

The procedure for this involves dividing the number by 26 until you’ve reached a number less than 26, taking the remainder each time and adding 65, since 65 is where ‘A’ is in the ASCII table. Read up on ASCII if that doesn’t make sense to you.

Note that like the originally linked question, this is 1-based rather than zero-based, so A -> 1, B -> 2.

def num_to_col_letters(num):
    letters = ''
    while num:
        mod = (num - 1) % 26
        letters += chr(mod + 65)
        num = (num - 1) // 26
    return ''.join(reversed(letters))

Example output:

for i in range(1, 53):
    print(i, num_to_col_letters(i))
1 A
2 B
3 C
4 D
...
25 Y
26 Z
27 AA
28 AB
29 AC
...
47 AU
48 AV
49 AW
50 AX
51 AY
52 AZ

Method 7

Recursive one line solution w/o libraries

def column(num, res = ''):
   return column((num - 1) // 26, 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'[(num - 1) % 26] + res) if num > 0 else res

Method 8

def _column(aInt):
    return chr(((aInt - 1) / 26)+ 64) + chr(((aInt - 1) % 26) + 1 + 64) if aInt > 26 else chr(aInt + 64)
    
print _column(1)
print _column(50)
print _column(100)
print _column(260)
print _column(270)

Output:
A
AX
CV
IZ
JJ

Method 9

This simple Python function works for columns with 1 or 2 letters.

def let(num):       

alphabeth = string.uppercase
na = len(alphabeth)

if num <= len(alphabeth):
    letters = alphabeth[num-1]
else:
    letters = alphabeth[ ((num-1) / na) - 1 ] +  alphabeth[((num-1) % na)]            

return letters

Method 10

Recursive Implementation

import string
def spreadsheet_column_encoding_reverse_recursive(x):
    def converter(x):
        return (
            ""
            if x == 0
            else converter((x - 1) // 26) + string.ascii_uppercase[(x - 1) % 26]
        )

    return converter(x)

Iterative Implementations

Version 1: uses chr, ord

def spreadsheet_column_encoding_reverse_iterative(x):
    s = list()

    while x:
        x -= 1
        s.append(chr(ord("A") + x % 26))
        x //= 26

    return "".join(reversed(s))

Version 2: Uses string.ascii_uppercase

import string
def spreadsheet_column_encoding_reverse_iterative(x):
    s = list()

    while x:
        x -= 1
        s.append(string.ascii_uppercase[x % 26])
        x //= 26

    return "".join(reversed(s))

Version 3: Uses divmod, chr, ord

def spreadsheet_column_encoding_reverse_iterative(x):
    s = list()

    while x:
        x, remainder = divmod(x - 1, 26)
        s.append(chr(ord("A") + remainder))

    return "".join(reversed(s))

Method 11

Here is a recursive solution:

def column_num_to_string(n):
    n, rem = divmod(n - 1, 26)
    char = chr(65 + rem)
    if n:
        return column_num_to_string(n) + char
    else:
        return char

column_num_to_string(28)
#output: 'AB'

The inverse can also be defined recursively, in a similar way:

def column_string_to_num(s):
    n = ord(s[-1]) - 64
    if s[:-1]:
        return 26 * (column_string_to_num(s[:-1])) + n
    else:
        return n
    
column_string_to_num("AB")
#output: 28

Method 12

Just to complicate everything a little bit I added caching, so the name of the same column will be calculated only once. The solution is based on a recipe by @Alex Benfica

import string


class ColumnName(dict):
    def __init__(self):
        super(ColumnName, self).__init__()
        self.alphabet = string.uppercase
        self.alphabet_size = len(self.alphabet)

    def __missing__(self, column_number):
        ret = self[column_number] = self.get_column_name(column_number)
        return ret

    def get_column_name(self, column_number):
        if column_number <= self.alphabet_size:
            return self.alphabet[column_number - 1]
        else:
            return self.alphabet[((column_number - 1) / self.alphabet_size) - 1] + self.alphabet[((column_number - 1) % self.alphabet_size)]

Usage example:

column = ColumnName()

for cn in range(1, 40):
    print column[cn]

for cn in range(1, 50):
    print column[cn]

Method 13

import math

num = 3500
row_number = str(math.ceil(num / 702))
letters = ''
num = num - 702 * math.floor(num / 702)
while num:
    mod = (num - 1) % 26
    letters += chr(mod + 65)
    num = (num - 1) // 26
result = row_number + ("".join(reversed(letters)))
print(result)

Method 14

import gspread

def letter2num(col_letter: str) -> int:
    row_num, col_num = gspread.utils.a1_to_rowcol(col_letter + '1')
    return col_num


def num2letter(col_num: int) -> str:
    return gspread.utils.rowcol_to_a1(1, col_num)[:-1]


# letter2num('D') => returns 4
# num2letter(4) => returns 'D'

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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