feature: Column.delete()

[Anderson-Liu]

The Table object has a way to add a column with add_column but no way to remove a column. Is there any way to implement that currently ?

[scanny]

No, there is no API support for this operation yet. This is a tricky operation for a few reasons.

First, any external references (like hyperlinks or images) from any cells that will be deleted need to be resolved first, so they're not left dangling.

Second, merged cells must be interpreted to work out what the result of deleting the column should be. This might just be "shortening" the merged cell from say 3-cells to 2-cells, or it could be deleting the first cell, which may mean also deleting the contents of the cell, leaving it blank.

In any case, it's an interesting feature, just not trivial to specify and implement.

[Anderson-Liu]

Well, thank you @scanny

[Dreamsorcerer]

Code for anyone trying to achieve this in the normal case (i.e. without the previously mentioned edge cases):

# Delete all cells in column. Must be done before deleting column.
for cell in table.column_cells(col_index):
    cell._tc.getparent().remove(cell._tc)
 
# Delete column reference.
grid = table._tbl.find("w:tblGrid", table._tbl.nsmap)
col_elem = grid[col_index]
grid.remove(col_elem)

[seahawks8]

just to add on the previous answer,

def delete_columns(table, columns):
    # sort columns descending
    columns.sort(reverse=True)
    
    grid = table._tbl.find("w:tblGrid", table._tbl.nsmap)
    for ci in columns:
        for cell in table.column_cells(ci):
            cell._tc.getparent().remove(cell._tc)

        # Delete column reference.
        col_elem = grid[ci]
        grid.remove(col_elem)

# call like this
delete_columns(table, [5, 6])