A shout out to all Pythonistas! Microsoft has something in store for you if you enjoy scripting in Excel.
Python to be among the official Excel scripting languages
According to a topic on Excel’s feedback hub opened last month, Microsoft considers adding Python for Excel. This topic has turned out to be the highly voted feature request, ever since it was put up on the hub.
Microsoft recently rolled out a survey in order to gather a detailed understanding on how users would like to make use of Python within Excel.
Python turns complexity to simplicity
Python is one of the most popular programming languages among developers, due to its simplicity in coding and its versatility. Talking about its ranking among other programming languages, Python ranks second on the PYPL programming languages ranking. It ranks third in the RedMonk Programming Language Rankings, and fourth in the TIOBE index.
If Python for Excel is sanctioned by Microsoft, one can easily work with Excel documents, Excel data, its core functions, using Python scripts replacing the current VBA scripts.
This Python scripting, would not only turn out to be a substitute for VBA, but also could be a substitute to field functions (=SUM(A1:A2)).
The idea of having Python as an official Excel scripting language, was highly appreciated by many users on board. Additionally, these users also chalked out that if Microsoft goes ahead in wiring Python within Excel, they also would require Python in other Microsoft office apps.
As per a discussion on the Hacker news forum, a user posted that, “Much as I would love for the power of Python in Excel it is important that whatever is done is consistent across the office experience. Some of us old enough to remember the multiple versions of VB-whatever across Excel, Word, Access and that in itself was a blow to productivity”
The user also added that, Microsoft should definitely choose Python and during this process it should also decide whether it would be Python with a .Net library–which has separate standard and core libraries–or IronPython. Later, this has to be done in a mechanism that provides exact same libraries and user-written code to work in the same way throughout other Microsoft Office products.
Though, Microsoft would be delighted in adding such a feature for their users, still not much is known about this project. Until then we can expect great surprises from Microsoft with user side benefits.