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Clickable Link: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/10549005-python-as-an-excel-scripting-language http

Clickable Link: https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/10549005-python-as-an-excel-scripting-language https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-... [disclaimer+bias: on Python team @ msft & would love to see this happen!]

odonnellryan 9y ago
So what's the strategy here re: security? I assume it'd be a fairly stripped-down version of Python ... or will you just design the UI to say "you probably shouldn't execute files from people you don't know" etc?
- smortaz 9y ago
  Challenges exist & will have to be looked at for sure. Incidentally, one of the guys on our team just a gave talk on his PEP for "Secure" Python: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0551/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0551/ There's a YT talk as well.
- davb 9y ago
  I’d rather full fat Python but heavily sandboxed with some form of firewall. “Do you want to allow 2018_Stock_Report_Q1.xlsp to connect to api.erp.corp.mycompany.com?”. Codesigning with my something under my corp CA, manage permissions via Group Policy and let users, on a per-endpoint or per-permission basis, authorise things like filesystem access, network connections, etc.
- esmi 9y ago
  From a security point of view how is embedding python different from embedding Visual Basic? This is not my area of expertise so I’m genuinely curious.
  - Groxx 9y ago
    Potentially different. .NET allows signed binaries / libs / a fully signed execution context, Python has nothing equivalent AFAIK.
    - auxym 9y ago
      Excel VBA is not .Net though. It's plain old VB code in text files inside the .xlsx, and you just have to trust it (or not).
      - Groxx 9y ago
        Aaah. Then probably about the same, yea :) Maybe less of a nightmare around dependencies than the pip world...?
Nullabillity 9y ago
> @ msft Well, I guess that explains why you care about Office in 2017.
- canadianwriter 9y ago
  That and the fact that the vast majority of companies use Office...
  - cm2187 9y ago
    Which is also why it is surprising that Microsoft has spent so little time on office in 20 years. Outside of changing the colors regularly, there has been very few new significant functionalities between Office 2003 and Office 2016. And opening the VBA IDE is a nasty reminder. I'd argue large companies are still running Windows because of Office. The cost of retraining people, redesigning all of these user processes and converting all those documents would be massive. Whereas most new corporate applications in the last 5 years have been mostly web based. So I am surprised Microsoft under-invest in what is they main strategic lock-in in the juicy enterprise market.
    - taspeotis 9y ago
      Between 2003 and 2016 they took some massive desktop applications and put versions of them on the web and mobile...
    - bluedino 9y ago
      If you think about it, only 20% if employees can use office at a medium to high level anyways - a lot less people to retrain. The rest are "I click this button then do this thing"
    - toyg 9y ago
      > very few new significant functionalities between Office 2003 and Office 2016 The first release to feature the Ribbon, arguably one of the all-time major changes in Office, was 2007. That took quite a bit for most users to get used to. An Office suite is not where you add experimental features for the hell of it. People use it to get the job done in so many different scenarios, any change will significantly impact entire industries. Office programs are the "lawyers" and "accountants" of the software world: their work has been more or less the same since they existed, and any major change to them is a basically societal upheaval, so their approach will always be naturally conservative.
bdowling 9y ago
So, would this imply numpy and scipy support in Python for Excel? How about support for Excel worksheets within Jupyter notebooks?
- smortaz 9y ago
  That's for the Excel team to decide. My personal hope is that they'll offer as a base: * Python 3 * Numpy, SciPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Altair, ... * Pythonic bindings for Excel APIs (sheets, etc etc) * VSCode's Python Editor + Debugger built in * Some sort of conda based env/pkg mgmt * Right-click, "Open in Jupyter" (data/code) * <your wish here>
  - vvanders 9y ago
    Yeah, matplotlib, scipy and numpy are kinda no-brainers there.
    - breatheoften 9y ago
      Please not matplotlib ... are we really stuck with matplotlib forever ..?
      - vvanders 9y ago
        If you've got better suggestions I'm all ears. I've found it pretty great for debugging and being able to understand data in a rapid manner.
        disgruntledphd2 9y ago
        ggplot2. Simply better in every way. Hell, even base R is better than matplotlib. Full disclosure: I hate matplotlib so very, very much.
  - auxym 9y ago
    Transparent access to Excel tables as Pandas Dataframes would be so, so very awesome. I mean, MS implemented these really nice Tables in excel, but then left us no way to easily query them with something like SQL.
askvictor 9y ago
Interestingly, the survey doesn't seem to consider education as a use-case of this - has your team considered that aspect? Spreadsheets are the most common way that school students are introduced to programming, and the only 'programming' that a lot of teachers (and others) do. There are heaps of reasons for this, but any even moderate programming (beyond very simple operations) in a spreadsheet sucks. Something like this (if it's easy out of the box) could revolutionise programming education (and data education for that matter). Are there plans to get this working with the Excel web-app, or just the desktop version? I'm just having a daydream about Excel, Juypter notebooks, and OneNote Class notebooks...
- rmbeard 9y ago
  I think we will see and are already seeing a move away from using spreadsheets in Education, there are simply much better solutions out there now. Jupyter notebooks being one which allow reading and writing to Excel files. The interface of these is far superior for educational purposes than a spreadsheet. I've already dropped Excel for this reason.
- smortaz 9y ago
  That's a very good point! I hope you provided that input :). Our team provides a free service for anyone to run Jupyter Notebooks on Azure. It's currently a big hit with the Edu crowd. We're seeing lots & lots of universities upload & teach courses on it. eg: http://notebooks.azure.com/richie http://notebooks.azure.com/richie There's also an Intro to Python notebook on the front page. Hopefully the Excel team will consider Jupyter integration, esp for the web-app version! You're right that it's a killer combo. Check out xlwing's video on using Excel+Jupyter - it's brilliant.

odonnellryan 9y ago

So what's the strategy here re: security? I assume it'd be a fairly stripped-down version of Python ... or will you just design the UI to say "you probably shouldn't execute files from people you don't know" etc?

smortaz 9y ago
Challenges exist & will have to be looked at for sure. Incidentally, one of the guys on our team just a gave talk on his PEP for "Secure" Python: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0551/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0551/ There's a YT talk as well.
davb 9y ago
I’d rather full fat Python but heavily sandboxed with some form of firewall. “Do you want to allow 2018_Stock_Report_Q1.xlsp to connect to api.erp.corp.mycompany.com?”. Codesigning with my something under my corp CA, manage permissions via Group Policy and let users, on a per-endpoint or per-permission basis, authorise things like filesystem access, network connections, etc.
esmi 9y ago
From a security point of view how is embedding python different from embedding Visual Basic? This is not my area of expertise so I’m genuinely curious.
- Groxx 9y ago
  Potentially different. .NET allows signed binaries / libs / a fully signed execution context, Python has nothing equivalent AFAIK.
  - auxym 9y ago
    Excel VBA is not .Net though. It's plain old VB code in text files inside the .xlsx, and you just have to trust it (or not).
    - Groxx 9y ago
      Aaah. Then probably about the same, yea :) Maybe less of a nightmare around dependencies than the pip world...?

Nullabillity 9y ago

> @ msft Well, I guess that explains why you care about Office in 2017.

canadianwriter 9y ago
That and the fact that the vast majority of companies use Office...
- cm2187 9y ago
  Which is also why it is surprising that Microsoft has spent so little time on office in 20 years. Outside of changing the colors regularly, there has been very few new significant functionalities between Office 2003 and Office 2016. And opening the VBA IDE is a nasty reminder. I'd argue large companies are still running Windows because of Office. The cost of retraining people, redesigning all of these user processes and converting all those documents would be massive. Whereas most new corporate applications in the last 5 years have been mostly web based. So I am surprised Microsoft under-invest in what is they main strategic lock-in in the juicy enterprise market.
  - taspeotis 9y ago
    Between 2003 and 2016 they took some massive desktop applications and put versions of them on the web and mobile...
  - bluedino 9y ago
    If you think about it, only 20% if employees can use office at a medium to high level anyways - a lot less people to retrain. The rest are "I click this button then do this thing"
  - toyg 9y ago
    > very few new significant functionalities between Office 2003 and Office 2016 The first release to feature the Ribbon, arguably one of the all-time major changes in Office, was 2007. That took quite a bit for most users to get used to. An Office suite is not where you add experimental features for the hell of it. People use it to get the job done in so many different scenarios, any change will significantly impact entire industries. Office programs are the "lawyers" and "accountants" of the software world: their work has been more or less the same since they existed, and any major change to them is a basically societal upheaval, so their approach will always be naturally conservative.

bdowling 9y ago

So, would this imply numpy and scipy support in Python for Excel? How about support for Excel worksheets within Jupyter notebooks?

smortaz 9y ago
That's for the Excel team to decide. My personal hope is that they'll offer as a base: * Python 3 * Numpy, SciPy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Altair, ... * Pythonic bindings for Excel APIs (sheets, etc etc) * VSCode's Python Editor + Debugger built in * Some sort of conda based env/pkg mgmt * Right-click, "Open in Jupyter" (data/code) * <your wish here>
- vvanders 9y ago
  Yeah, matplotlib, scipy and numpy are kinda no-brainers there.
  - breatheoften 9y ago
    Please not matplotlib ... are we really stuck with matplotlib forever ..?
    - vvanders 9y ago
      If you've got better suggestions I'm all ears. I've found it pretty great for debugging and being able to understand data in a rapid manner.
      - disgruntledphd2 9y ago
        ggplot2. Simply better in every way. Hell, even base R is better than matplotlib. Full disclosure: I hate matplotlib so very, very much.
- auxym 9y ago
  Transparent access to Excel tables as Pandas Dataframes would be so, so very awesome. I mean, MS implemented these really nice Tables in excel, but then left us no way to easily query them with something like SQL.

askvictor 9y ago

Interestingly, the survey doesn't seem to consider education as a use-case of this - has your team considered that aspect? Spreadsheets are the most common way that school students are introduced to programming, and the only 'programming' that a lot of teachers (and others) do. There are heaps of reasons for this, but any even moderate programming (beyond very simple operations) in a spreadsheet sucks. Something like this (if it's easy out of the box) could revolutionise programming education (and data education for that matter). Are there plans to get this working with the Excel web-app, or just the desktop version? I'm just having a daydream about Excel, Juypter notebooks, and OneNote Class notebooks...

rmbeard 9y ago
I think we will see and are already seeing a move away from using spreadsheets in Education, there are simply much better solutions out there now. Jupyter notebooks being one which allow reading and writing to Excel files. The interface of these is far superior for educational purposes than a spreadsheet. I've already dropped Excel for this reason.
smortaz 9y ago
That's a very good point! I hope you provided that input :). Our team provides a free service for anyone to run Jupyter Notebooks on Azure. It's currently a big hit with the Edu crowd. We're seeing lots & lots of universities upload & teach courses on it. eg: http://notebooks.azure.com/richie http://notebooks.azure.com/richie There's also an Intro to Python notebook on the front page. Hopefully the Excel team will consider Jupyter integration, esp for the web-app version! You're right that it's a killer combo. Check out xlwing's video on using Excel+Jupyter - it's brilliant.