Example: Autofitting columns manually#

An example of simulating autofitting column widths using the cell_autofit_width() utility function.

The following example demonstrates manually auto-fitting the the width of a column in Excel based on the maximum string width. The worksheet autofit() method will do this automatically but occasionally you may need to control the maximum and minimum column widths yourself.

_images/autofit_manually.png 
##############################################################################
#
# The following example demonstrates manually auto-fitting the the width of a
# column in Excel based on the maximum string width. The worksheet ``autofit()``
# method will do this automatically but occasionally you may need to control the
# maximum and minimum column widths yourself.
#
# SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause
#
# Copyright (c) 2013-2025, John McNamara, jmcnamara@cpan.org
#
from functools import reduce

import xlsxwriter
from xlsxwriter.utility import cell_autofit_width

workbook = xlsxwriter.Workbook("autofit.xlsx")
worksheet = workbook.add_worksheet()

# Some string data to write.
cities = ["Addis Ababa", "Buenos Aires", "Cairo", "Dhaka"]

# Write the strings:
worksheet.write_column(0, 0, cities)

# Find the maximum column width in pixels.
max_width = reduce(max, map(cell_autofit_width, cities))

# Set the column width as if it was auto-fitted.
worksheet.set_column_pixels(0, 0, max_width)

workbook.close()