How to Remove the Header Row From Pandas Dataframe – Definitive Guide

Dataframe column headers are used to identify columns.

You can remove the header row from the Pandas dataframe using the df.columns = range(df.shape[1]) statement.

This tutorial teaches you the different methods to remove the header row from Pandas dataframe and when it is appropriate to use each method.

Sample Dataframe

Create a sample dataframe with headers.

This dataframe will be used to remove headers using different methods.

import pandas as pd 

users = [('Shivam', 'Pandey', 'India'),
         ('Kumar', 'Ram' , 'India'),
         ('Felix','John' , 'Germany')
        ]

#Create a DataFrame object
df = pd.DataFrame(users, 
                    columns = ['First Name' , 'Last Name', 'Country']
                    ) 

df

DataFrame Will Look Like

	First Name	Last Name	Country
0	Shivam	Pandey	India
1	Kumar	Ram	India
2	Felix	John	Germany

Using Range And Shape

The range() function returns a sequence of numbers in a given range.

To remove the column headers and set the column indexes as the header,

• Pass the range of columns using the df.shape[1] to the range function, and it’ll return the range of numbers.
• Assign the value to the df.columns attribute.

Code

The following code demonstrates how to use the range function to remove the header and set the column indexes as header.

df.columns = range(df.shape[1])

df

DataFrame Will Look Like

	0	1	2	3	4	5
0	John	Doe	120 jefferson st.	Riverside	NJ	8075
1	Jack	McGinnis	220 hobo Av.	Phila	PA	9119
2	John “Da Man”	Repici	120 Jefferson St.	Riverside	NJ	8075
3	Stephen	Tyler	7452 Terrace “At the Plaza” road	SomeTown	SD	91234
4	NaN	Blankman	NaN	SomeTown	SD	298
5	Joan “the bone”, Anne	Jet	9th, at Terrace plc	Desert City	CO	123

Using Dictionary

This section teaches you how to completely remove the header information from the pandas dataframe using a dictionary.

• Create a dictionary with keys as existing columns and values as empty strings
• Rename the dataframe using the columns attribute and pass the dictionary, which has the empty string mappings for each column.
• Use inplace=True to perform the replace operation in the same dataframe instead of creating a new copy.

Code

The following code demonstrates how to use the dictionary to remove header information from the Pandas dataframe.

col_dict = dict.fromkeys(df.columns, '')

df.rename(columns = col_dict, inplace=True)

df

DataFrame Will Look Like

0	Shivam	Pandey	India
1	Kumar	Ram	India
2	Felix	John	Germany

Remove Header While Reading CSV

To remove header information while reading a CSV file and creating a pandas dataframe, you can use th header=None parameter in the read_csv() method.

• By default, the read_csv() method considers the first row of the CSV file as the header.
• While using header=None, the first row will not be considered a header, and the column indexes will be used as a header.

Code

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv('addresses.csv', header=None)

df

DataFrame Will Look Like

	0	1	2	3	4	5
0	John	Doe	120 jefferson st.	Riverside	NJ	8075
1	Jack	McGinnis	220 hobo Av.	Phila	PA	9119
2	John “Da Man”	Repici	120 Jefferson St.	Riverside	NJ	8075
3	Stephen	Tyler	7452 Terrace “At the Plaza” road	SomeTown	SD	91234
4	NaN	Blankman	NaN	SomeTown	SD	298
5	Joan “the bone”, Anne	Jet	9th, at Terrace plc	Desert City	CO	123

Additional Resources

• How To Read a CSV file Without a Header in Pandas
• How To Replace Header With First Row In Pandas Dataframe