Loop-help for a newbie?

[pcsailor]

This merges the entire page exactly as I need:

start_col = [2, 4, 6, 8]
end_col = [x + 1 for x in start_col]

for i in range (1, 44): # this is row range
    # merges 9 cells into 1 in 1 row
    if i in [1, 4, 24, 41, 42, 43]:
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=1, end_row=i, end_column=9)
    # merge 2 cells into 1 in 1 row
    elif i in [2, 3, 5, 8, 101, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 40]:
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=2, end_row=i, end_column=3)
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=4, end_row=i, end_column=5)
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=6, end_row=i, end_column=7)
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=8, end_row=i, end_column=9)
    # merge 2 cells into 1 and 4 cells into 1 cell, all in 1 row
    elif  i in [22, 39]:
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=2, end_row=i, end_column=3)
        sheet.merge_cells(start_row=i, start_column=6, end_row=i, end_column=9)

Note the active cells in this sheet are rows 1-43 and columns A to I. I'm working on borders and alignment next.

Thanks for the through explanation on zip and col1/2. Zip seems like a handy function I need to know better.

Phil