Announcing Python in Excel: Combining the power of Python and the flexibility of Excel.
techcommunity.microsoft.com
Since its inception, Microsoft Excel has changed how people organize, analyze, and visualize their data, providing a basis for decision-making for the..

Since its inception, Microsoft Excel has changed how people organize, analyze, and visualize their data, providing a basis for decision-making for the flying billionaires heads up in the clouds who don’t give a fuck for life offtheline

  • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    42·
    1 year ago

    I don’t get it. Why I need cloud to run Python scripts which can be done locally? Installing Python isn’t hard and MS can bundle it as a library with Office either.

    • Master@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      1 year ago

      This sounds like a security check. Our liability and ransomware insurance both require scripts to be turned off for excel and word.

      • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        103·
        1 year ago

        I believe security threats can be mitigated locally without resorts to cloud.

        Actually, one can argue using cloud is less secure because there is a risk of sensitive data leaked out of cooperate network.

        • heyoni@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Cloud doesn’t have access to local drives…but in this day and age, python could be containerized or sandboxed. Sounds messy though.

        • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          You could argue that, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

          Microsoft has a massive amount of resources to throw at securing their environment, whereas most businesses simply don’t have the ability to field a dedicated security team. The solution many reach is to offload risk to your software vendor, in this case Microsoft. Then, if there is data lost, it’s Microsoft’s fault, and it’s their problem to fix, too. It’s not ideal, but it’s the world we’re living in.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.deEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been asking this for every other cloud service - either companies are jumping on the 10-year-old bandwagon or want to collect data for AI training purposes in a way you cannot just disable in the settings. And of course you cannot self-host your own server.

    • looeee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      When you save your doc to one drive then you can access it from the web version of office. That’s the reason they’ve been encouraging developers to write add-ins that run from the cloud. I’m guessing that this is for similar reasons

      • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
        3·
        1 year ago

        You can also access docs by uploading it to the web version of office. Correct me if I’m wrong but last I remembered add-ins don’t choose between desktop and web.

    • mrsgreenpotato@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Not everyone has an opportunity to work with Python in their work environment. I’m on the “business” side of the company, capable of doing most of programming stuff myself (Python, C#, SQL, etc.), whereas only “IT” people can work with the proper compileable code. And I’m left out working with VBA macros, or ask IT to write a script for me, which will take 1 year to develop. This change now will improve my local productivity for sure.

      • umami_wasabi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        This issue isn’t about authoring the script, is about why it needs to execute on the cloud rather locally.

  • just_change_it@lemmy.worldEnglish
    372·
    1 year ago

    Does anyone not think Microsoft is going to use all their cloud data for training language models?

    “We promise not to” doesn’t seem realistic to me. Proving they used it is impossible.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.deEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      “We promise not to”

      Where did you quote this from? I think they won’t care, just like GitHub Copilot, or it will be an opt-out feature.

  • Kethal@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    1 year ago

    This is inside out programming. I want my code to read data files, not my data files to contain code.

    The first example is how to take cells in the sheet and make a data frame in an Excel equation. That’s easy, pandas.read_excel(): no clound needed, no need to hunt through cells of a sheet to find your code.