Microsoft announces Python integration in Excel; Know what’s coming

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Launched in 1985, Microsoft Excel has been a powerful tool for businesses and individuals for almost 4 decades, and Microsoft has capitalized on this advantage by offering new features that attract and retain more users. It allows users to organize, analyze, and visualize their data in a better way. In June, Microsoft announced several major updates to its spreadsheet editor such as improvements in visualization, leveraging Office Scripts, recommended formulae, and more.

Now, Microsoft has announced more features that are coming to Excel with the integration of high-level programming language Python.

Providing a major boost to its analytical capabilities, Microsoft on August 22 announced that it is bringing Python to Excel through a Public Preview. It will be natively integrated into the Excel grid and can be accessed using the Excel ribbon, without needing it to be separately installed. Users will be able to take advantage of its functions by inputting Python code directly into cells using the PY function, Microsoft announced in a blog post.

Users can use Power Query and the connectors built in Microsoft Excel to bring over data from external sources to Python-enabled Excel sheets. It will be compatible with existing tools such as charts, formulae, PivotTables, and more. Python in Excel will use Anaconda Distribution running via Azure to provide analytics services such as predictive analytics, visualization using Matplotlib and Seaborn, cleaning data, and more.

Python in Excel will also leverage machine learning, forecasting techniques, and predictive analytics based on Python libraries such as scikit-learn and statsmodels to provide a variety of services such as time series modelling, regression analysis, and more.

Stefan