diff --git a/pandas/formats/common.py b/pandas/formats/common.py
index 0218890fd4311..5779baed277ce 100644
--- a/pandas/formats/common.py
+++ b/pandas/formats/common.py
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-def _get_level_lengths(levels, sentinel=''):
+def get_level_lengths(levels, sentinel=''):
     """For each index in each level the function returns lengths of indexes.
 
     Parameters
diff --git a/pandas/formats/excel.py b/pandas/formats/excel.py
index aaf392a6af2fd..a3f75b33ce588 100644
--- a/pandas/formats/excel.py
+++ b/pandas/formats/excel.py
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
 import pandas._libs.lib as lib
 from pandas.core.index import Index, MultiIndex
 from pandas.tseries.period import PeriodIndex
-from pandas.formats.common import _get_level_lengths
+from pandas.formats.common import get_level_lengths
 
 
 # from collections import namedtuple
@@ -376,7 +376,7 @@ def _format_header_mi(self):
         columns = self.columns
         level_strs = columns.format(sparsify=self.merge_cells, adjoin=False,
                                     names=False)
-        level_lengths = _get_level_lengths(level_strs)
+        level_lengths = get_level_lengths(level_strs)
         coloffset = 0
         lnum = 0
 
diff --git a/pandas/formats/format.py b/pandas/formats/format.py
index 4fcac45468434..ef8c6b50b9b4e 100644
--- a/pandas/formats/format.py
+++ b/pandas/formats/format.py
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@
 from pandas.io.common import _get_handle, UnicodeWriter, _expand_user
 from pandas.formats.printing import adjoin, justify, pprint_thing
 from pandas.formats.excel import ExcelFormatter  # for downstream # NOQA
-from pandas.formats.common import _get_level_lengths
+from pandas.formats.common import get_level_lengths
 import pandas.core.common as com
 import pandas._libs.lib as lib
 from pandas._libs.tslib import (iNaT, Timestamp, Timedelta,
@@ -1189,7 +1189,7 @@ def _column_header():
                 sentinel = None
             levels = self.columns.format(sparsify=sentinel, adjoin=False,
                                          names=False)
-            level_lengths = _get_level_lengths(levels, sentinel)
+            level_lengths = get_level_lengths(levels, sentinel)
             inner_lvl = len(level_lengths) - 1
             for lnum, (records, values) in enumerate(zip(level_lengths,
                                                          levels)):