How to rearrange the order of the columns in a Pandas DataFrame ?

Reordering the columns in a Pandas DataFrame is simple and straightforward. Example:

Reorder columns of a DataFrame

Let's consider the following code

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

data = np.arange(1,21).reshape(4,5)

df = pd.DataFrame(data=data, columns=['A','C','E','D','B'])

print(df)

which returns the dataframe:

    A   C   E   D   B
0   1   2   3   4   5
1   6   7   8   9  10
2  11  12  13  14  15
3  16  17  18  19  20

To rearrange the order of the columns, you simply need to specify the order of the column labels in your code. For example, if you want to reorder your current DataFrame with three columns ( ['A', 'C', 'E', 'D', 'B']) to one with the columns reordered as ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']:

df_new = df[['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']]

print(df_new)

It's important to note that this method does not change the original dataframe; it returns a new dataframe with the desired column order.

Another example

Create a list of dataframe column names

col_names = list( df.columns )

col_names

returns here

['A', 'C', 'E', 'D', 'B']

Now sort the list using the sort() method

col_names.sort()

col_names

returns

['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']

Create a new dataframe

df_new = df[col_names]

print(df_new)

Output

    A   B   C   D   E
0   1   5   2   4   3
1   6  10   7   9   8
2  11  15  12  14  13
3  16  20  17  19  18

References