since strings data types have variable length, it is by default stored as object dtype. If you want to store them as string type, you can do something like this.

df['column'] = df['column'].astype('|S80') #where the max length is set at 80 bytes,

or alternatively

df['column'] = df['column'].astype('|S') # which will by default set the length to the max len it encounters
Answer from Siraj S. on Stack Overflow
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Saturn Cloud
saturncloud.io › blog › python-pandas-converting-object-to-string-type-in-dataframes
Python Pandas: Converting Object to String Type in DataFrames | Saturn Cloud Blog
July 10, 2023 - In this post, we will walk you through the process of converting object data types to string data types in Pandas DataFrames.
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Pandas
pandas.pydata.org › docs › reference › api › pandas.DataFrame.to_string.html
pandas.DataFrame.to_string — pandas 3.0.3 documentation
If buf is None, returns the result as a string. Otherwise returns None. ... Convert DataFrame to HTML.
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Modelo.io
modelo.io › damf › article › 2024 › 10 › 11 › 2031 › how-to-convert-object-to-string-in-pandas
How to Convert Object to String in Pandas
Learn how to easily convert object data type to string in Pandas for better data manipulation and analysis.
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/learnpython › unable to convert a pandas object to a string in my dataframe
r/learnpython on Reddit: Unable to convert a pandas object to a string in my DataFrame
December 10, 2021 -

Trying to use the YouTube API to pull through some videos for data analysis and am currently using just two videos in a dataframe to play around with the functionality as I'm new to all of this.

I'm using another API to get the transcripts for each video but I need to input the video_id into that API to get transcripts for each video.

The only problem is everything is stored as an object and whenever I try .astype(str) or something like that, it still says the data is an object and means I can't do anything with the data when a string is a required argument for the other API

This is what I get when calling .info() on my dataframe:

<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
RangeIndex: 2 entries, 0 to 1
Data columns (total 10 columns):
 #   Column                Non-Null Count  Dtype 
---  ------                --------------  ----- 
 0   video_id              2 non-null      object
 1   publishedAt           2 non-null      object
 2   channelId             2 non-null      object
 3   title                 2 non-null      object
 4   description           2 non-null      object
 5   channelTitle          2 non-null      object
 6   tags                  2 non-null      object
 7   categoryId            2 non-null      object
 8   liveBroadcastContent  2 non-null      object
 9   defaultAudioLanguage  2 non-null      object
dtypes: object(10)
memory usage: 288.0+ bytes

Any help would be really appreciated or an explanation of how these issues are usually handled

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Statistics Globe
statisticsglobe.com › home › python programming language for statistics & data science › convert object data type to string in pandas dataframe column in python (2 examples)
Convert Object Data Type to String in pandas DataFrame Python Column
May 2, 2022 - In Table 2 you can see that we have created an updated version of our pandas DataFrame using the previous Python programming code. In this new DataFrame, you can see a b in front of the values in the column x2. The b stands for bytes, and you can learn more about this here. However, let’s check the dtypes of our updated DataFrame columns: print(data.dtypes) # Print data types of columns # x1 int64 # x2 |S1 # x3 int64 # dtype: object · The column x2 has been converted to the |S1 class (which stands for strings with a length of 1).
Find elsewhere
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Pandas
pandas.pydata.org › docs › reference › api › pandas.DataFrame.convert_dtypes.html
pandas.DataFrame.convert_dtypes — pandas 3.0.3 documentation
Infer dtypes of objects. ... Convert argument to datetime. ... Convert argument to timedelta. ... Convert argument to a numeric type. ... By default, convert_dtypes will attempt to convert a Series (or each Series in a DataFrame) to dtypes that support pd.NA. By using the options convert_string, ...
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › python › convert-object-to-string-in-python
Convert Object to String in Python - GeeksforGeeks
July 15, 2025 - Since every element in Python is an object, we can use the built-in str() and repr() methods to convert any built-in object into a string representation.
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Python Forum
python-forum.io › thread-18112.html
Convert 'object' to 'string'
May 6, 2019 - I am using a pandas dataframe and creating plots and one of the columns is dtype: object. I would like to convert these values into strings, how would i go about that? Thanks in advance.
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Pandas
pandas.pydata.org › pandas-docs › version › 0.17.1 › generated › pandas.DataFrame.to_string.html
pandas.DataFrame.to_string — pandas 0.17.1 documentation
DataFrame.to_string(buf=None, columns=None, col_space=None, header=True, index=True, na_rep='NaN', formatters=None, float_format=None, sparsify=None, index_names=True, justify=None, line_width=None, max_rows=None, max_cols=None, show_dimensions=False)¶
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Statology
statology.org › home › how to convert pandas dataframe columns to strings
How to Convert Pandas DataFrame Columns to Strings
July 29, 2020 - #convert every column to strings df = df.astype(str) #check data type of each column df.dtypes player object points object assists object dtype: object
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › pandas › how-to-convert-pandas-columns-to-string
How to Convert Pandas Columns to String - GeeksforGeeks
July 23, 2025 - This method successfully converts the Numeric_Column from an integer type to a string. The map() function in Pandas is used for element-wise transformations.
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GeeksforGeeks
geeksforgeeks.org › pandas › pandas-convert-column-to-string-type
Pandas Convert Column To String Type - GeeksforGeeks
July 23, 2025 - <class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'> ... 0 NumericColumn 4 non-null object dtypes: object(1) memory usage: 160.0+ bytes · The apply() function is another way of converting the data type....
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datagy
datagy.io › home › pandas tutorials › pandas dataframes › pandas: convert column values to strings
Pandas: Convert Column Values to Strings • datagy
December 15, 2022 - In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Python’s Pandas library to convert a column’s values to a string data type. You will learn how to convert Pandas integers and floats into strings. You’ll also learn how strings have evolved in Pandas, and the advantages of using the Pandas string dtype.
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Delft Stack
delftstack.com › home › howto › python pandas › how to convert pandas dataframe column to string
How to Convert DataFrame Column to String in Pandas | Delft Stack
February 2, 2024 - >>> df A B C 0 1 4.1 7 1 2 5.2 8 2 3 6.3 9 >>> df['A'] = df['A'].astype(str) >>> df A B C 0 1 4.1 7 1 2 5.2 8 2 3 6.3 9 >>> df.dtypes A object B float64 C object dtype: object · astype() method doesn’t modify the DataFrame data in-place, ...
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Delft Stack
delftstack.com › home › howto › python pandas › pandas convert column values to string
How to Convert Column Values to String in Pandas | Delft Stack
February 2, 2024 - It converts the datatype of all DataFrame columns to the string type denoted by object in the output. import pandas as pd employees_df = pd.DataFrame( { "Name": ["Ayush", "Bikram", "Ceela", "Kusal", "Shanty"], "Score": [31, 38, 33, 39, 35], "Age": [33, 34, 38, 45, 37], } ) print("DataFrame before Conversion:") print(employees_df, "\n") print("Datatype of columns before conversion:") print(employees_df.dtypes, "\n") employees_df["Score"] = employees_df["Score"].astype(str) print("DataFrame after conversion:") print(employees_df, "\n") print("Datatype of columns after conversion:") print(employees_df.dtypes)
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Spark By {Examples}
sparkbyexamples.com › home › pandas › pandas convert column to string type
Pandas Convert Column to String Type - Spark By {Examples}
July 3, 2025 - In this article, I will explain how to convert single column or multiple columns to string type in pandas DataFrame, here, I will demonstrate using
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Saturn Cloud
saturncloud.io › blog › how-to-convert-columns-to-string-in-pandas
How to Convert Columns to String in Pandas | Saturn Cloud Blog
June 19, 2023 - Types of data after conversion employee_id object name object age int64 salary object experience object dtype: object · In this article, we have explained how to convert columns to string in Pandas using Python.
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Vultr Docs
docs.vultr.com › python › third-party › pandas › DataFrame › to_string
Python Pandas DataFrame to_string() - Convert to String Form | Vultr Docs
December 30, 2024 - The to_string() method converts the entire DataFrame into a string format and prints it, displaying all rows and columns. Understand the behavior when dealing with larger DataFrames.