Microsoft releases a new version that allows users to write and run Python code directly within Excel's interface.
Microsoft is unveiling a new version of Excel that will permit users to write and execute Python code directly within the spreadsheet software's interface. Stefan Kinnestrand, General Manager of Product Marketing at Microsoft, detailed this update in a recent blog post.
Excel boasts capabilities for visualizing business data and tasks such as determining the average value of customer purchases. According to Microsoft, the addition of Python support will extend these features. The programming language can be used to create more sophisticated data science workflows.
For instance, an employee might write a Python script that scans data in an Excel table and identifies duplicate fields. These fields can then be deleted to prevent any skewing of analyses. Moreover, it's mentioned that Python can also be leveraged for constructing data visualizations and training machine learning models.
Many of Python's data science capabilities are underpinned by Python modules. These are pre-packaged code components developed by the open-source community. Typically, these Python modules need to be manually downloaded and configured by users, which can be time-consuming. However, this new version of Excel sidesteps this step, eliminating the need for users to download any additional components or modify settings to utilize Excel's Python functionalities.
This feature will initially be rolled out to Microsoft 365 Insiders. While it's set to be available only on the desktop version of Excel at first, it's noted that Python computations will run on the Microsoft Cloud.
