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Lets say you have several .txt files in a folder and want to merge all text files into a single Excel document:

A.txt

A1

A2

A3

A4

A5

A6

A7

A8

A9

A10

A11

A12

A13

A14

A15

A16

A17

A18

A19

A20

A21

A22

B.txt

B1

B2

B3

B4

B5

B6

B7

B8

B9

B10

B11

B12

B13

B14

C.txt

C1

C2

C3

C4

C5

C6

C7

C8

C9

C10

C11

C12

C13

C14

C15

C16

C17

C18

C19

C20

C21

C22

C23

C24

C25

C26

C27

C28

C29

C30

C31

C32

C33

D.txt

//empty file

E.txt

E1

E2

E3

E4

E5

E6

E7

E8

E9

E10

E11

E12

E13

E14

E15

E16

E17

E18

E19

E20

E21

E22

E23

E24

E25

E26

E27

E28

E29

E30

E31

E32

E33

E34

E35

E36

E37

E38

The Output:

spreadsheet_to_text.py

"""

Reads all .txt files in path of the script into a single

spreadsheet. In the first line of the spreadsheet the filename were

the data is from is displayed. Then the data follows

"""



import os

from typing import List

import openpyxl

from openpyxl.utils import get_column_letter



def text_into_spreadsheet():

    """main logic for read .txt into spreadsheet"""

    workbook = openpyxl.Workbook()

    sheet = workbook.active

    column: int = 1

    filenames: List[str] = os.listdir()

    for filename in filenames:

        if filename.endswith(".txt"):

            with open(filename) as textfile:

                lines: List[int] = textfile.readlines()

                sheet[get_column_letter(column) + '1'] = filename

                row: int = 2

                for line in lines:

                    sheet[get_column_letter(column) + str(row)] = line

                    row += 1

            column += 1

    workbook.save('result.xlsx')



if __name__ == "__main__":

    text_into_spreadsheet()

What do you think about the code?
How can it be improved?

edit: you can find a programm doing it in reversed in Spreadsheets to text files

There are a few things we could improve:

• 
  

  you could use the "lazy" glob.iglob() to filter out *.txt files instead of doing the os.listdir(), keeping the whole list if memory and having an extra check inside the loop:

  
  
  

  for filename in glob.iglob("*.txt"):
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  instead of using textfile.readlines() and read all the lines in a file into memory, iterate over the file object directly in a "lazy" manner:

  
  
  

  for line in textfile:
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  instead of manually keeping track of column value, you could use enumerate():

  
  
  

  for column, filename in enumerate(glob.iglob("*.txt"), start=1):
  
  

  
  
  

  Same idea could be applied for rows.

  
  


• 
  

  I think you don't have to use get_column_letter() and instead operate the numbers which you have:

  
  
  

  sheet.cell(row=row, column=column).value = line
  
  

  
  



• not to say anything against openpyxl, but I personally find xlsxwriter module's API more enjoyable and more feature rich

Complete improved version:

import glob



import openpyxl





def text_into_spreadsheet():

    """main logic for read .txt into spreadsheet"""

    workbook = openpyxl.Workbook()

    sheet = workbook.active



    for column, filename in enumerate(glob.iglob("*.txt"), start=1):

        with open(filename) as textfile:

            sheet.cell(row=1, column=column).value = filename



            for row, line in enumerate(textfile, start=2):

                sheet.cell(row=row, column=column).value = line



    workbook.save('result.xlsx')





if __name__ == "__main__":

    text_into_spreadsheet()

If you're on a Linux/Mac machine, it's as simple as this shell command:

paste ?.txt

The ? wildcard will match all your files, A.txt to E.txt in order. The paste command will paste them in parallel columns, separated by TABs.

You can then open your spreadsheet app and import the text file, and add the header.

Per a question formerly in comments: Can you auto-generate the header as well?
Sure:

for f in ?.txt; do echo -en "$ft"; done; echo; paste ?.txt

Also, I'm assuming a single letter before .txt, as in the original example. If you want all files ending in .txt, then it's *.txt instead of ?.txt.