Force pandas.to_excel to write data as 'Text' instead 'General' format

Question

I've already set cell format as 'Text' in the target Excel column. However pandas.to_excel changes the format to 'General' when writing strings to this column, eventually the column ends up with blank cells are formatted as 'Text' and non-blank ones as 'General'. Is there a way to write data as 'Text' instead of 'General'?

def exportData(df, dstfile, sheet):
    book = load_workbook(dstfile)
    writer = pd.ExcelWriter(dstfile, engine='openpyxl', date_format='dd/mm/yyyy', datetime_format='mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm')
    writer.book = book
    writer.sheets = dict((ws.title, ws) for ws in book.worksheets)
    df.to_excel(writer, header=False, startrow=2, index=False, sheet_name=sheet)
    writer.save()

Answer 1

You can iterate over the cells using the following method.

The cells you want to format as TEXT just use:

cell.number_format = '@'

This will set the cell formatting as TEXT in Excel.

There might be a way to do it straight from the ExcelWriter within Pandas but I'm unfarmiliar with it, maybe someone who knows better will edit the answer for that option as well.