How to Drop Columns in Pandas (4 Examples)

You can use the drop() function to drop one or more columns from a pandas DataFrame:

#drop one column by name
df.drop('column_name', axis=1, inplace=True)

#drop multiple columns by name
df.drop(['column_name1', 'column_name2'], axis=1, inplace=True)

#drop one column by index
df.drop(df.columns[[0]], axis=1, inplace=True)

#drop multiple columns by index
df.drop(df.columns[[0,2,5]], axis=1, inplace=True)

Note the following:

The axis argument specifies whether to drop rows (0) or columns (1).
The inplace argument specifies to drop the columns in place without reassigning the DataFrame.

The following examples show how to use this function in practice with the following pandas DataFrame:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'A': [25, 12, 15, 14, 19, 23, 25, 29],
                   'B': [5, 7, 7, 9, 12, 9, 9, 4],
                   'C': [11, 8, 10, 6, 6, 5, 9, 12]})

#view DataFrame
df

	A	B	C
0	25	5	11
1	12	7	8
2	15	7	10
3	14	9	6
4	19	12	6
5	23	9	5
6	25	9	9
7	29	4	12

Example 1: Drop One Column by Name

The following code shows how to drop one column from the DataFrame by name:

#drop column named 'B' from DataFrame
df.drop('B', axis=1, inplace=True) 

#view DataFrame
df

	A	C
0	25	11
1	12	8
2	15	10
3	14	6
4	19	6
5	23	5
6	25	9
7	29	12

Example 2: Drop Multiple Columns by Name

The following code shows how to drop multiple columns by name:

#drop columns 'A' and 'C' from DataFrame
df.drop(['A', 'C'], axis=1, inplace=True) 

#view DataFrame
df

        B
0	5
1	7
2	7
3	9
4	12
5	9
6	9
7	4

Example 3: Drop One Column by Index

The following code shows how to drop one column by index:

#drop first column from DataFrame
df.drop(df.columns[[0]], axis=1, inplace=True) 

#view DataFrame
df

        B	C
0	5	11
1	7	8
2	7	10
3	9	6
4	12	6
5	9	5
6	9	9
7	4	12

Example 4: Drop Multiple Columns by Index

The following code shows how to drop multiple columns by index:

#drop multiple columns from DataFrame
df.drop(df.columns[[0, 1]], axis=1, inplace=True) 

#view DataFrame
df

        C
0	11
1	8
2	10
3	6
4	6
5	5
6	9
7	12