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Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

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Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#321

Post by laurels-marts »

localhost wrote: post #141
cableshaft wrote: post #13

I 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…

There are few key reasons for running in a hypervisor isolated container on Azure with no access to the Internet: - We can guarantee a consistent experience for all users. Imagine having to maintain your own local distribution of Python and guaranteeing that it works with Excel as versions diverge over time? Yikes. - We make it possible to share your Excel workbook with other users and have the calculation just work.…

I think this could be just a toggle in settings:

A. run python in the cloud (default)

B. specify path to your local python interpreter

When you open a workbook that is using B show a warning before running anything. Then behind the scenes spin up a new venv that installs everything from requirements.txt and executes the code in workbook locally.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#322

Post by rvba »

kaashif wrote: post #107
walthamstow wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are killing the deskrop version with sharepoint.

Sharepoint and web-shared files make it very difficult to link spreadsheets between each other, even one way around.

In theory it works, in practice it doesnt. (PowerQuery is an inconvenient stopgap to simple links)

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#323

Post by orf »

cameronh90 wrote: post #85
inglor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We use Excel for a bunch of "critical" tasks as defined by the financial regulator, which means any of their dependencies also have to be assessed to ensure they meet the required level of stability. What this means is we'd need to go from just requiring a laptop and a copy of the spreadsheet to requiring redundant internet connections and validating Microsoft's backend meet the regulator's requirements. I'm pretty s…

Having seen the quality of “critical” macros, excel spreadsheets, and “dev/prod” SMB drives anyone can mess with it’s absolutely clear no regulator gives a fuck.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#324

Post by ripley12 »

fzumstein wrote: post #254
vba wrote: post #249

This was a nice surprise to see today as an Ex-Excel developer who worked on trying to bring Python to Excel (and, I guess, failing ;)). 7+ years ago I had the option of leaving the Excel team. My then boss’s boss knew I had an interest in bringing Python to Excel and offered me a chance to tackle it if I chose to stay. What was meant to be a 6 month project turned into a ~3 year project, the Python part faded away a…

Thanks for your work! The async JS functions are amazing and allowed me to ship rock-solid Custom functions with xlwings and Python. The problem with Office.js is that it’s just simply too hard to get started with all the npm bloat for the average Excel user (even more professional devs struggle). Well, I am pretty happy how I am saving users from having to use Node.js: https://docs.xlwings.org/en/latest/pro/server/o…

> The problem with Office.js is that it’s just simply too hard to get started with all the npm bloat for the average Excel user (even more professional devs struggle)

IMO deployment is an even harder problem. The Office team makes it incredibly difficult to deploy web add-ins (presumably for business reasons) and accordingly most companies I'm familiar with are still using the ancient, barely-supported COM+VSTO add-in models.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#325

Post by tzs »

buovjaga wrote: post #301
tzs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in a lot of cases its not even the advanced stuff that keeps people on Excel and other proprietary things. It's the seemingly little things. My biggest beef with LibreOffice's spreadsheet (and with Apple's Numbers) is how they handle copy/paste of discontiguous selections. Consider this 5 row by 3 column set of data: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f Suppose you select the 1 2 3 row, the 7 8 9 row, and the a b c…

I get the same result in LibreOffice 7.5.5 as your Excel example. Which LibreOffice version did you use?

7.5.5.2 on MacOS.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#326

Post by datavirtue »

dnadler wrote: post #288
datavirtue wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably a trillion dollars flowing through Excel spreadsheets.

Likely a gross underestimate, given all the financial (both investment and risk) modeling done with excel.

I was trying to be conservative.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#328

Post by version_five »

From my skim they are incorporating a new-ish release of python. I wonder how long until (and if) MS forks python to add some functionality (extends it) and what happens next. Is it that farfetched to picture corporates running MS python with dot net integration or something and the ecosystem getting all screwed up.

Re: Microsoft is bringing Python to Excel

#330

Post by doctorpangloss »

vba wrote: post #249

This was a nice surprise to see today as an Ex-Excel developer who worked on trying to bring Python to Excel (and, I guess, failing ;)). 7+ years ago I had the option of leaving the Excel team. My then boss’s boss knew I had an interest in bringing Python to Excel and offered me a chance to tackle it if I chose to stay. What was meant to be a 6 month project turned into a ~3 year project, the Python part faded away a…

> the Python part faded away and we ended up enabling JavaScript Custom Functions in Excel instead.

Nobody could have anticipated that GPT4 would author Python better than anything else.

Nonetheless, I kind of just want Google Drive except Excel, without adopting anything more than the Office ecosystem, that just works with simultaneous editing.

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