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I was very excited until I read this line
Python calculations run in the Microsoft Cloud, with the results returned into an Excel worksheet.
That’s an instant non starter for me.
Not to mention this integration seems very much focused around the graphing libraries of python and not using it for data processing. It’s not the ‘excel powered by python’ I dreamed of.
Any way they can find to shove even more azure in our faces, right? And later on "bundling is not monopoly abuse"
Edit: but we should love new Microsoft, because open source or something
And I assume one would have to pay extra for that cloud service. This is just another money grab by Microsoft.
I think it's just the first step since VBA is in a dire need of a replacement.
Around the time Office 365 rolled out and replaced Office 2023 at my old job we've had a crapload of old VBA tools just refuse to work. Those tools were in use for 10-15 years sometimes with barely any maintenance required.
Then with O365 some calls to certain 3rd party libraries resulted in Excel crashing without any single error message, stack, nothing. At that time everyone understood they need to get off that ship ASAP, corporate policies got super strict on end user created stuff. PowerBI and Power Automate are not there to replace it and I think MS feels threatened.
They brought typescript to excel too. Unfortunately it only runs via the cloud (through SharePoint). It's just another way to capture people within their walled garden of subscription based office products
It’s the same with Python support.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A public preview of the feature is available today, allowing Excel users to manipulate and analyze data from Python.
“You can manipulate and explore data in Excel using Python plots and libraries, and then use Excel’s formulas, charts and PivotTables to further refine your insights,” explains Stefan Kinnestrand, general manager of modern work at Microsoft.
Microsoft is also adding a new PY function that allows Python data to be exposed within the grid of an Excel spreadsheet.
Python calculations run in Microsoft’s Cloud, with the results returned into an Excel worksheet.
Excel users will be able to create formulas, PivotTables, and charts all based on Python data, with the ability to bring in charting libraries like Matplotlib and Seaborn for visualizations like heatmaps, violin plots, and swarm plots.
Python in Excel is rolling out today as a public preview for Microsoft 365 Insiders in the Beta Channel.
The original article contains 342 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Cool. I'll be an Excel guru after all.
As much as I hate Microsoft, I have to say this looks like a smart move for them
Might be interesting if they can develop a sandboxed version of python strictly for statistics.