Excel Now Has Python - And It's Awesome 

This is mindblown. But yeah, the remote code execution ones is probably the major downside here. Great video as always.

I was pulled in to the professional developer review team to get updates and give feedback on this product as they were developing it (I've been seeing previews and giving feedback for just under a year before the announcement). The remote only aspect of this was my biggest concern, every time. I pushed to ask why, if I have python installed locally, I cant execute code locally or even on my own servers. Depending on the sensitivity of your data, it's the difference in a viable product and a no-use-case product. That said, I'm SUPER stoked about the union here for use cases where it's allowed... and finally glad they announced it to the public and released it to the wild :P

I'm so happy I learnt python!

3:31 Matplotlib is not Matlab. It's a Python library designed to resemble and be an alternative to Matlab.

I wonder how good the Python in the cloud in Excel on Wine on Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux integration is.

6:53 You can *kinda* do regex in Excel, but only by creating a User-Defined Function in VBA and utilizing the Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions library. It's not the prettiest implementation, nor the most performant, but it'll work using Excel's own built-in features.

For some time I prefered plotting graphs in MATLAB since Excel's graphs were not my cup of tea, so I'm excited to see that Matplotlib is directly supported!

Although its use case could be limited, I think this could find some really good use in computer science classes. The way this helps to visualize arrays is awesome, and I'm sure classes can find ways to use this which are different and easier to understand than normal textbook examples of Python. I do really hope some code can be run locally without a subscription!

I could see this being big for teachers. Even compared to Jupyter notebooks, The way this allows you to see your entire program state at once and mix and match more familiar Excel functionality with less familiar code could be huge for someone trying to teach computer science in a middle school or high school setting

GOnna start watching you again. Your pretty much my second Computer Science professor 😂

I'll give you a giant thumbs up, Professor Joe

This is super amazing. It's in a not super useful state right now, but the potential with this is so huge. VBA is completely impractical these days, so being able to use Python for stuff instead is so wonderful

So on the topic of them running it remotely. I'm not super happy with that but I understand the reasoning. But since windows has hyper-V included, at least the pro version, I would have liked to see an option to have Excel spin up a hyper-V container and run the code there instead of remotely

I wish it will allow using local python instead of cloud. Also allow using Visual Studio Code instead of that integrated code editor without any syntax highlighting

Excellent video as always 👍👍

17:40 Correction: Pyhton only evaluates variables, formulas or function calls with `eval()`, if you want to execute code that contains multiple lines or assigns variables you need `exec()`. Unfortunately that always returns `None`, so you'll have to pass in a dict as the second argument (as in `namespace = {}; exec('x = 5 # or other stuff', namespace)`) which then contains all variables set/imported/defined inside the evaluated code.

Thanks, Joe, your making my day better.

Keep up the (mostly) weekly uploads, love your vids! Always informative and fun to watch 😊

14:45 yes, it does interpret strings as strings by default. str is the class for strings in python.

Thanks, Joe 🙂

Thanks for the info! Looks a little messy right now, but I'm sure they will polish it and make it much easier to handle.

I just got the python ability in Excel, what I am most excited about is the ability to produce better charts and store/manipulate the data in a more organised way than Excel generally allows on the grid.

I appreciate you, man!

This is going to make if statements much easier to read in Excel. The regular IF function in Excel is kind of a pain to use, especially if you want multiple comparisons at once.

It seems like it's running some sort of Jupiter lab instance in the VM and the way cells run is very similar to a .ipynb notebook.

19:05 An alternative to nested IF statements natively in Excel is using a combination of an IFNA and IFS. For example: =IFNA(IFS(C7="A",C10,C7="B",C11,C7="C",C12),"Invalid Choice!")

Why is running python on a hosted VM better than running locally iyo?

Great Video 🙃

That's a groundbreaking feature. I had troubles understanding excel script. Now everything will be different. Thanks for video btw.

A warning about the eval() function: Most programmers try to avoid eval() as much as possible, because it introduces a potential security hole. If someone is able to input the right data, eval() lets that person run any code they want on your system. So generally, you should stay away from it unless you're absolutely sure there's no way anyone malicious could exploit your code, and you absolutely need to use eval().

Thanks Joe! Just wondering if it’s possible to use Python formulas in named ranges?

it was an interesting video indeed, i don't use excell much (i just have a sheet with my monthly spendings and what i have left at that point and that's from a template by microsoft) so this is nothing for me but still verry interesting

Remember the PC? The Personal computer? For the first time one could do his/her own computing at home instead having to rent time to use the big mainframe computer at campus or university. The first pc pioneers were excited that they could finally do all the computing at home without having to pay per hour. And what are we doing now? Right, going back to the 60s where the computing is done on someone else his computer. What the bleep, micro transactions in excel functions, get out of here. Bring the P(personal) back in computing

Can you read or export files like csv with python for excel like you can with jupyter labs?

Very nice! Cant wait to get this at my job in 25 years 😂

Sounded interesting at first, but seems kind of disappointing. Im able todo so much more with the included VBA (even though its dumb because they dont have common sense features the same across the entier microsoft suite... Such as buttons and their customization properties. And there is glaring bugs like how in in excel you cant add a row to a defined table with the normal code when a sheet is protected except for vba editing.)

Finally a good excel update. Also I find it funny how he casted a string as a string :)

9:11 To show all imported modules you could insert the following line as the last line of the imports cell: ', '.join(name for name in globals() if type(globals()[name]).__name__=='module') To make it return all functions, replace 'module' with 'function'. Explanation: *', '.join()* joins all values in the given iterable (in this case a generator) with ', ' inbetween into a single string. *(name for name in globals)* iterates over all variable names in the global namespace *globals()[name]* returns the actual object the variable with the current name is referencing *type(globals()[name]).__name__=='module'* compares the type name of the object with 'module' The whole generator returns only the modules' names, which the str.join() then joins together to one string that gets returned by the whole line.

One thing I've learnt during my programming career is that "eval is evil". I wouldn't use it, even if the code is running on a separate VM, there might still be vulnerabilities that could allow malicious code to "escape" it and do nefarious things into your host system.

What font do you use in excel?

1. So what am I supposed to do with 40 years of excel macros? 2. The data analysis math package has existed since almost the first. So do I have to now go update 40 years of those as well?

Huge respect from Egypt to Latvia

Pretty sure the peoper way to output things from the indented code blocks (if statements) is to "return" the value. Though your way works as well.

I just knew this was going to be really powerful once it debuted and here is why: A software language perform operations on strings of characters, including numbers which are considered strings with unique properties. All strings can be grouped into special sets and given unique properties, such as: Bool, Integer, Float, and so on. In other languages these are called (Data) Types. Individual Data Types can be further grouped together into a special set called a Class, Struct and or Structure which only have these unique data types as built-in attributes and or properties. The excel spreadsheet allows you to view the memory layout in a flattened manor. In a traditional programming language the cells would represent a CPU and GPU register, or auxiliary memory address. The reason this development paradigm is more powerful than a traditional programming language will become clear to the world with the introduction of AI (OpenAI's ChatGPT), and hopefully AGI in the upcoming releases.

Thanks!

Can you also use the Python features in Excel's Filght Simulator window? ;)

That was cool !! I had a question; does anyone know of a relatively painless way to “merge 2 .json bookmark files. ?? I currently have two individual bookmark files from Firefox’s browsers on different machines that I would like to merge as one file.

So, how much are they going to charge for the extended capability?

First rule of data science: If it can be written in python it will be written in python.

Seems like it could potentially be very useful. For now, I'll stick with my XLOOKUPs and nested IF statements, but it might be nice if I'd need anything more than one ELIF. It doesn't immediately seem like it replaces VBA and macros yet either, but I'd guess it's only a matter of time? It's a shame about the extra cost, though.

I receive connection errors when I am trying to connect to localhost with Flowise or Local LLM APIs. In Python it's ok, but with excel it's not. Any thoughts?

You should totally do a Python course, I'd take it.

Whenever I had to store an array/list/dictionary into an Excel cell, I stored it as JSON. I like that it need not be done that way anymore with Python

Can Excel-Python write and/or run Excel macros?

Why didn't they just spin up a small vm locally when you start Excel if you enable the feature?

Non-cloud virtualization (WSL, etc.) or WebAssembly-based Python are the best ways for non-cloud Python for Excel. Given how much issue macro security is for an average Office user.

I'm not sure if I understand correctly ... this can be run only online? So ... all data are send to MS? Yeah! I'm wrong. No? O..O

Make more videos like this.Make more videos on openings focused on product based companies.

please do a vid aboujt tensorflow in exel 😆 - and i wonder if tkinter works in it

I am required to use Excel and Python on their own on a daily basis during my PhD, and that this exists is my absolute worst nightmare coming true.

Sick

IP Loggers bouta be crazy edit: oh. edit 2: OH.

if all the actions are done on hyperV on microsoft servers, I wonder if you can see the ip. And if so, I have MANY crazy ideas what can be done.... Of course that would be big security hole. btw now making games in excel will be much simpler.

Late response from Office to what Google offers many years ago, through JavaScript code, and all of it is natively, free, online, and more powerful. Please, Joe, make a video of it.

hope "only office" will also have this feature

I think this idea is pretty awesome but I really dislike the whole running the code in the cloud part. I can see why there's an argument for running it this way but I think the down side of needing to run it over the Internet is a deal breaker for me. I'd still be willing to pay the extra fee for this feature but only if I can do everything offline.

I know, it's so cool

HI joe, how are you?

edit: match was added in 3.10, sry base = xl("C6") match xl("C7").lower(): case 'a': base *= 10 case 'b': base *= 20 case 'c': base /= 1/50 case _: base = 'Error' base

Yeah; ability to write READABLE conditional statements, and use variables, directly within Excel, would be froggin useful to me, cause we do A LOT of that, as long as you can pull down your "formula" (e.g. Python code) within a table. Otherwise...

yes

wait, so now i can easily make excel games on python? fantastic!

WOWWW 👍

Finally, a useful python program

03:30 its “mat plot lib”. Not mat lab :)

Excel was capable of evaluating python code for a finite number of instructions before this update.

16:01 that 1st line should not be necessary, if you were using if(): elif(): elif(): that would be shorter than use a else: output="", you could use output=None BTW

Superman + Captain America = Python in Excel

Cool

Can't wait until firefox has Python to change the url 🎉🎉🎉

can it do pygame?

I wonder how long it'll be before libreoffice copies this :P

so many competition. now a lot more people know how to code.

what a big scam. Surely a big ass company like Microsoft could figure out how to run it safely in your own computer, but yhe good ol' "safety concerns we could avoid force us to only offer this as a service instad of a product". Customers are paying regularly to not have the latest features. And they will be happy to throw more money at should come with what they already pay! Imagine if your web browser forced you to pay a subscription to run every website's code in the browser's owner's server instead of your computer, for "safety concerns". While it's possible that exploits coild lead to the code being unsafe to run, it has never been a big enough concern to not let users run the code in their own machine. This feature is bullshit and it hurts to know that people won't see the scam and will happily pay for it.

Awesome feature but it would be more awesome if it installs the python locally 😊

If I cannot run the code locally I'm just straight up never using this feature. Just make it like macros, where it has a specific file extension and downloaded files have to have Python explcitly enabled to actually run the code. Microsoft can make whatever excuses they want, but until I'm able to use the feature 100% offline it may as well not even exist in my eyes.

I needed to color a shape with the color of a cell that i set No vba code ever worked Gonna try python

*0:41*

HOLY!?

Yeah, yeah! so many new attack vectors :3 Let's celebrate!

Having Python in Excel is cool but what would happen if malicious python code gets executed?

Hi everyone!

I only learning Ren'Py so far.😭

Well, I know @standupmaths uses Excel and Python quite a bit...

There's no reason this should need cloud access. I get the reason for doing it for security, but Microsoft knows all about containers, and that modern Windows has Hyper-V built-in. They should be able to come up with something to run the Python in a container or local VM so that people don't have to worry about their data being given to another entity. Using the cloud should be entirely optional.

I do not like the fact that it needs to run in the Microsoft cloud. This should really be optional (in that case it would be really great). That's already a disappointment to me. But that is because I dislike that whole thing where they are forcing you more and more to use cloud services in general. But that's my freedom oriented mindset. Feel free to disagree with me of course. But hopefully some kind of open source project will take over the idea to use this thing for free and on your own system. It's not that am not against cloud, but I consider it a mistake that it's made into the only option, especially when it comes to having to rely on large anonymous companies like Microsoft and Google.

Hello

First of all I saw dual audio support in your video on youtube now why are you using it in video I love watching your video in dual audio pls add dual audio

would be nice if they would allow for a local runtime, also eval is evil don't use it

16:09 That's not much of a nuance... More like a bug! Let's see how long it takes for them to fix it