I am the sole Python developer in a company where everyone uses spreadsheets. With this project, will my coworkers be able to run my Python functions? Or only functions that are built into Python and packages like pandas and NumPy?
Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
101–110 of 455 posts
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#102This is a nightmare. Python devs are going to be asked to support the half-baked python macros of business users.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scientific notation ("2.02308E+13") is just how Excel displays a large enough numeric value like your example; it's not doing any conversion, as you can see if you paste that number into Excel, confirm that it's showing the scientific notation, and then click into the cell to confirm that the formula bar still shows the original number (20230822090811). If you paste your date string in a more standard date format…
Do you _really_ think I've spent the past 10 years getting files like this and I still don't understand the reason. I didn't ask for an explanation. I asked for a fix. What are you doing here?? I can provide instructions on how to do this until the cows come home. I will still get files with these issues. Is that not obvious? Do you really think I want to examine _tens of thousands of rows_ in documents that are 100…
My my, why so angry? You're expecting something that Excel doesn't support for good reason. The string you used as an example might be a date string to YOU, but to Excel and many of its users it's just a large integer. Lots of regular use cases would break if Excel would interpret that string as a datwle
If you want Excel to interpret strings as dates, use a more common date representation such as iso8601
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#104I wish it wasn't solely powered only by Microsoft Cloud and could support python running locally, but regardless I think this will still be huge and single-handedly modernizes Excel by a large margin. This alone could eliminate the need for websites that just want this sort of data. I can think of a past project at a previous job I did building an analytics website used only by a handful of people internally that cou…
Hi I work on Excel, can you write a summary of why that's important to you and send it to bgruenbaum@microsoft.com ? I'll get it in front of a PM. Alternatively PMs read all the feedback sent via the feedback UI on Excel web and desktop so you can use that instead if you prefer.
Not OP but I would never want to use this if I was running a security minded business. Why would it be okay to send out my entire dataset to the Microsoft cloud to run a few simple queries. How long is the data stored on your servers? Since it’s operating on the data directly, it’s not possible to anonymize or redact the contents of the data.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#105Seems cool, and a bit awful. Writing elaborated python-code in that little text-field must be a nightmare of its own. Where can I connect a VS Code or vim to the sheet for coding in comfort?
Excel has an editor. Try hitting alt+f11. "Open in vscode" would be an excellent feature though.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#106> “I’m excited that this excellent, tight integration of Python and Excel is now seeing the light of day,” says Guido van Rossum, Python’s creator and now a Microsoft distinguished engineer. It's depressing seeing someone who has done so much work for the free software community now working to enrich the spyware-laden proprietary product offerings of a megacorp. Nothing about this is "good for Python" or hackers - it…
Even installing Python seems to a hurdle for many employees. They need to get approval from IT, and it seems not to get done. They use Excel, and if they can use Python within Excel without installing anything extra, it will increase the user base of Python. After getting a taste of Python they may install Python locally and use it outside Excel. So I think this will be "good for Python". Certainly integration of VBA into Excel has been good for VBA.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looking at what they're doing with Outlook I'd bet money that they intend to replace the desktop version of Excel with the web version sooner or later.
I agree but expect that Excel will be the very last app of the suite that they make web-only. Excel heads like my wife absolutely hate the web version.
A lot of people in finance are Excel heads and hate the web version. And they have a lot of money to throw around, surely Microsoft cares about them.
I really don't see them killing the desktop version.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#108I wonder who'll be the first to ship python in a major browser
There's https://pyscript.net/ -- or do you mean for scripting the browser's behaviour rather than replacing JS in website code?
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#109I was so excited about Python in Excel, until it said "run in the cloud." There just doesn't seem to be any reason for this except to tie you into their cloud service. It feels so much like protecting me from unsafe printer ink.
I'm generally a fan of MS Office products and try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Please help me think of a plausibly good reason for requiring Python to run in the cloud, that is not just about lock-in.
Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel
#110Aw, shoot. I thought I would be able to have fun sending coworkers:
import os
os.rmdir("C:\Windows\System32")