r/Python • u/Chilangosta • Dec 14 '17
MS is considering official Python integration with Excel, and is asking for input
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u/1roOt Dec 14 '17
I think it is a really good idea. Who uses VBA anyways? Or better: who likes to use VBA?
If i have a specific problem with VBA it is a hell of a mess to find the right resources to fix my problem. With python, I just do a quick search and can find nearly limitless helpful resources.
So go python!
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u/Chilangosta Dec 14 '17
Amen! I wish so badly I could be writing in Python instead of VBA every time I find myself writing in it.
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u/Mikuro Dec 14 '17
Every time I find myself writing VBA, I reevaluate my life choices.
To me it's an anti-feature; all it does is make my job harder, because it's one more barrier to convincing others to invest in proper tools.
And this is coming from someone who has done a lot of work in Basic (mainly REALbasic, now known as Xojo), and liked it.
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Dec 14 '17
My experience is quite the opposite, VBA has saved me and my shop countless hours of manual data manipulation. I won't comment on VBA's features as a language, it is what it is, but its close integration with Excel/Word object model is invaluable.
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u/Grendel84 Dec 15 '17
The fact that your username is one letter short of a palindrome is very bothersome to me
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u/dedicated2fitness Dec 14 '17
Yes but that's a long winded way of saying - if I didn't have to use it I wouldn't
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u/noodle_horse Dec 15 '17
Or, it's usable and better than nothing.
Better than nothing.
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u/brtt3000 Dec 14 '17
So that is not about VBA itself but the ability to script everything. You might use JavaScript or Lua or whatever if it would be available.
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Dec 14 '17
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u/cuulcars Dec 14 '17
I get what you’re saying. I think OP meant people would say “Just use Excel, it can do whatever you need with VBA” but now “just using Excel” would actually be legitimate because of the support for python.
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u/HawkinsT Dec 14 '17 edited Dec 14 '17
This is Microsoft though; you know their implementation of python won't conform to any standards.
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u/bmoregeo Dec 14 '17
MS has been a lot better about that stuff lately. I’m not an MS fanboy, but I got to give props for improvements
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Dec 17 '17
I think they will have to conform to the standards because the resources are out there for standard Python and developer familiarity. Otherwise this doesn't make sense. Google went with Java for android mainly to avoid learning a new language just for Android. I think MS has similar thinking.
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u/emmmmceeee Dec 14 '17
Who doesn’t like VBA? Source control is overrated.
Actually, being the only one in the office who knows how to maintain the VBA scripts is a form of job security. Even if the IDE looks like an exhibit from a computer museum.
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u/bamfurlong Dec 15 '17
This is what I tell myself. Unfortunately, it immediately leads to me wondering how much I really want to keep this job ;p
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u/Rostin Dec 14 '17
Lots of engineers use VBA. By engineers, I mean mechanical, chemical, etc, not software.
My formal education is all in chemical engineering, so I hang around that sub a lot. At least once a month, a student asks which "coding language" he should learn, and the majority answer every time is VBA.
And in many ways, that makes sense, despite VBA's many shortcomings. These people work at companies where they may not have the freedom to install something like a Python interpreter, and certainly can't depend on any of their co-workers having done so. Microsoft Office is the thing that everyone is guaranteed to have, and (ab)using Excel is second nature.
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Dec 15 '17
The company I work at is slowly making the migration from spreadsheets to python libraries and jupyter notebooks. They often still feed data in and out of excel but it's a start.
Like you said it's mech/elec engineers working with revit and vendor sheets and looking for ways to improve their workflow.
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Dec 14 '17
Yeah, I've spent the last six months at work taking stuff out of Excel, processing it with python and sending it back. It would be nice to cut out that export/import step.
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u/theofficialdeavmi Dec 14 '17
I think it's a great idea as it is a great language for the job and also it will get more people into real programming languages possibly too!
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u/InfamousMike Dec 15 '17
I know Python and I'm alright with Excel. Never picked up VBA. But if Excel works with Python, the amount of new things I can do with VBA would be awesome
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u/DrewSmithee Dec 15 '17
Me? For technical computing sure Python is better, but for automating redundant tasks inside a spreadsheet or interacting with office products or anything that needs to be shared in a usable format with non-coders, VBA is by far the superior solution for what I'll call low effort tasks. Yes it could be done better with a "real" language but most tasks VBA is good for is when it's not worth developing a full application. Most VBA users are engineers and accountants or whatever not software developers.
And it's incredibly easy to Google VBA code snippets, arguably easier than Python since it's been around forever.
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u/BumwineBaudelaire Dec 15 '17
the IT college kids of /r/python seem to disagree with you about how people use Excel in the real world
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u/agumonkey Dec 14 '17
I remember googling extensively excel python script a while ago. There were a bunch of extensions already. Official support is just hard to describe with words.
I don't have VBA but python is leagues above it in so many ways. I wonder what impact it will have in shops, the amount of crappy vba over excel applications is massive, the potential improvement too.
ps: Python used to be the niche lang for 3D apps, after MIT started to pitch it as teaching vessel it became something else, now Excel. Hum
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Dec 14 '17
I'm not saying it would be a bad thing (on the contrary) but they should have added PowerShell support years ago just as they did with the rest of their applications. That would be a powerful integration, this way, meh. The Python crowd already made very powerfull Excel tools on their own.
(And to those who are going to say that it's already possible to access the Excel COM API from PowerShell, no, it's not the same as having PowerShell integrated in Excel the way VBA is)
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u/Chilangosta Dec 14 '17
I agree PowerShell would be awesome, but I don't think that would necessarily be better than native Python support than Excel. The current Excel tools allow for reading and editing Excel files, and for some runtime tools that require a local Python server instance (e.g. xlwings). Native Python scripting would be far less klunky and could actually replace VBA for many Excel professionals out there.
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Dec 14 '17
Having Excel PowerShell cmdlets would be awesome. It would allow you for instance to use Excel cmdlets and SQL Server cmdlets effortlesly in a single script. Same with other Windows servers that use PowerShell. As for Python I use PyWin32 to manipulate Excel and it has almost 1:1 correspondence to VBA code.
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Dec 15 '17
Whenever I've wanted to use powershell with excel files its always been from outside of excel for an automated task, and it works just fine so I'm not sure why they never added it in the same way VBA is... silly.
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u/decimated_napkin Dec 14 '17
Adding python support to Excel is like adding a lion to your pack of hunting dogs and then being upset when the lion just goes off and hunts by itself because your dogs are inconsequential to its success.
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u/musashisamurai Dec 14 '17
Ehh I use openpyxl a lot. Makes it easier to visualize data and store measurements and such. Also in my company all the oldies want excel sheets anyways, so it helps.
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u/decimated_napkin Dec 14 '17
Your last sentence is the only reason why Python for Excel is viable imo. If there weren't such a glut of legacy workbooks and lack of programmers, Excel wouldn't have much that Python couldn't do better.
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u/Chilangosta Dec 14 '17
To your point: A lot of people, myself included, started with VBA and then learned Python when VBA just wouldn't cut it. If MS truly integrated Python with Excel, it could help spawn a new group of programmers.
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u/decimated_napkin Dec 14 '17
I was the same way. Still so grateful for VBA as it helped spawn my interest in programming, but now I find it completely unnecessary.
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u/continue_stocking Dec 14 '17
VBA was my gateway language too. I needed programmatic control that formulae couldn't give me, and it's been a ride ever since. I can't imagine how much easier things would have been if I could have learned Python instead of that dead language. VBA teaches you that working with classes is hard, and this mindset was probably the greatest impediment to my development as a programmer.
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u/teilo Dec 14 '17
Not true at all. The financial world thrives on one-off scenarios for which it would be wasteful to engage programmers every time a new case comes up which is not covered by existing tools. There is a reason EssBase is primarily used through Oracle’s SmartView plugin for Excel.
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u/Scubastarter Dec 14 '17
First time I’ve seen someone mention Essbase around here! Do you happen to know how to refresh a SmartView query on Excel using Python?
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u/Rivus Dec 15 '17
Your comment reminded me of this. Although you are, of course, way more on topic :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_does_one_patch_KDE2_under_FreeBSD%3F
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u/jwink3101 Dec 14 '17
I used to agree 100%, but there were recently a few things where I wanted a quicker and easier view of the affect of some parameter changes. It was pretty trivial but I did it in excel and was pretty happy. I think the real advantage is to (more) quickly input and visual data.
But, I would say 99% of the time, coding is better.
My dad does some pretty intense stuff in excel that should be done in code. He has nested functions and if statements as many as 10 or so deep. It's a debugging nightmare!
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Dec 15 '17
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u/decimated_napkin Dec 15 '17
I use Excel every day, it's still my go to software for a lot of things. But just because a lot of people are too lazy to learn how to code doesn't change the fact that anything that can be done in Excel can be done in Python at a much larger scale and with significantly better performance.
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u/tunisia3507 Dec 14 '17
Pandas' read_excel totally blew my mind when I used it. I'd struggled with openpyxl and so on before, it was a faff trying to skip the right rows and do type casting and not overshoot row length and so on. But this function just did it all, no fuss.
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u/pelijr Dec 14 '17
100% agree. read_excel and merging dataframes were a god-send for me. Trying to write the equivalent code in VBA could have taken me half a day or more to implement. Using Pandas? I think my code was roughly 30 lines at most, and it worked flawlessly and was super simple to configure/setup. You just can't beat the amount of Python resources that are available to you as a developer (at least compared to VBA).
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u/xt11111 Dec 14 '17
Trying to write the equivalent code in VBA could have taken me half a day or more to implement. Using Pandas? I think my code was roughly 30 lines at most
To be fair, pandas is a library, if there was a similarly rich ecosystem around VBA you could also just call a function in a library. There just tends not to be a rich ecosystem of free & open software around Microsoft platforms.
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u/pelijr Dec 15 '17
Right, which is why I would be pretty happy if they chose to embrace python natively like this. It's very "un-Microsoft"
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u/Hotel_Arrakis Dec 14 '17
I'm not sure I agree, but an upvote for your simile.
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Dec 14 '17
Yup. What I would rather have is a python module/lib that allows me direct access to excel files, including the formulas. No exporting to CSV first.
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u/SpaceSteak Dec 15 '17
There are plenty of options already if you want Python to Excel like editing a file outside Excel. It's also possible to make macros in Python instead of VBA.
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u/artsrc Dec 14 '17
Excel looks like a grid of numeric inputs and results.
Python looks like an expression of an algorithm.
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u/imrushabhshah Dec 27 '17
I dont agree with you sir as python is a language with scopes beyond any programming languages, but in excel the data representation and data storage is so simple that for half of data analytics can be done just by using some siple tools. Both have there own pack and can dominate any other if they gets together
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Dec 14 '17 edited Dec 14 '17
As long as they don't use python 2... Edit: spelling
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u/Elffuhs Dec 14 '17
On another note, LibreOffice already supports python!
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Dec 14 '17
Another reason to not use Office
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u/CadeOCarimbo Dec 14 '17
Sorry but Libre Office is awful compared to Office.
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Dec 14 '17
Yeah, especially in this particular situation.
Good luck getting the sort of people who want to replace VBA with python in Excel to use Calc.
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u/csmark Dec 15 '17
Libre Office is leaps and bounds ahead of Pages and Numbers. Those are Apple's apps for those that don't know.
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u/Steampunkery Dec 15 '17
I haven’t found it to be all that terrible. Honestly the only problem I’ve had with them is opening proprietary formats.
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u/CryptoTheGrey Dec 15 '17
I have to disagree, libre can do more than any other suite with the only exceptions being self justifying Microsoft products (which can easily be replaced). Please do tell what aspects of office make you believe it is better?
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u/rfc1771 Dec 15 '17
Pivot tables, table relationships, external relationships, multithreading, charting options, macros, Excel has a far more extensive built-in function set, ability to import foreign formats...
all better in Excel
If you've ever tried to do any corporate accounting in LibreOffice Calc the differences are pretty obvious
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u/exhuma Dec 15 '17
That's all nice and well. But unfortunately in a workplace where Excel is deeply ingrained, using LibreOffice is just not feasible. Just too many documents riddled with MSOffice idiosyncrasies which won't open properly on LO.
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u/antiproton Dec 14 '17
Jesus christ, anything except VBA. It's hard to take this seriously because the scripting side of Office has languished in VBA hell for decades.
Microsoft built an entire scripting engine on top of .net that would have been perfect to replace the garbage already in existence, but they simply refused to bother.
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u/xt11111 Dec 14 '17
There is still a lot of territorial disputes going on within Microsoft, some teams are fucking fantastic, others are the same half-assed, resting on your laurels parasites they've always been.
Maybe this is a sign that the Office team is in for a bit of a housecleaning so they can start moving forward for the first time in 10 years.
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u/Moondra2017 Dec 14 '17
This would be amazing. Anecdotal, but I see more and more non-programmers trying to learn Python, to automate their daily office tasks. Python is a great general purpose language.
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u/SecretAgentZeroNine Dec 14 '17
This is great for finance teams that aren't already all the way in with Python and/or R. Also, I think it's healthier to continue to move away from Excel, and use Python and/or R libraries that produce non-interactive and interactive tables. Excel is just too error prone and stifling when compared to a programming language.
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Dec 14 '17
Better idea: use python instead of excel for all data analysis
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Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
This isn't realistic in an office where lots of people:
are Excel-literate but not Python-literate
want tools they can tinker with
aren't gonna become Python-literate any time soon
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u/Acurus_Cow Dec 15 '17
And where company policies prevent me from installing python packages.
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u/LyndsySimon Dec 15 '17
You should find another job.
No, I'm not kidding. This is a huge red flag that the company you work flow is so bound by procedure that they cannot make changes quickly enough to react to changing market conditions.
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u/ANEPICLIE Dec 15 '17
Any large corporation or government that isn't necessarily programming oriented will frequently have similar restrictions.
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u/cyanydeez Dec 15 '17
you forgot the biggest impediment:
Existing, fully QA/QC Excel calcs from 20 years ago that have no reason to be revised or tinkered with because they mostly work
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u/SpaceSteak Dec 15 '17
Is there an easier platform than Excel that integrates GUI for viewing and modifying data, as well as a huge api for custom code in Python I'm not aware of?
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Dec 15 '17
easier ? maybe not
better? more reproducible?
For any sort of serious analysis Excel is the road to 'hit F9 and hope Excel doesn't crash' and directories full of files like: 'my_analysis_2017Dec12_2PM_finalfinalversion_forserious.xlsx'
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u/hoocoodanode Dec 15 '17
It's already happening, but it really depends on your definition of data analysis. Given the amount of time I already spend helping people structure very simple spreadsheets using well established formulas included in excel, I shudder at the thought of teaching them pandas.
Python is a great beginner language, but you have to want to learn it. Most people can't even be bothered to learn the basics of a gui-driven numerical tool like excel, nevermind a far more abstract programming language.
I agree with many of the posts here, for straight forward cut and paste and sum and pivot table operations it's pretty hard to be faster than working in excel. The problem with excel is that the analysis is difficult to repeat, harder to automate, and impossible to ensure data integrity.
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u/boatsnbros Dec 16 '17
Python for crunching, excel/tableau for reporting - because clients understand excel, and pretty charts always impress even if they provide little value.
Adding native support for excel doesn't really help with any of this, considering xlwings is already pretty amazing. I'm all for the proliferation of Python, but xlwings is basically a direct swap for VBA other than the fact it's not portable.
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u/robotnikman Dec 14 '17
This would be really interesting to see, I can already think of some uses for it at my new workplace.
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Dec 14 '17
As someone who uses win32com nearly daily to automate workflows in MS Office this would be a game changer for me.
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u/pelijr Dec 15 '17
Just as a learning experience, can you go into more detail as to what kind of solutions you've developed using win32com?
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u/hoocoodanode Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
I've used commtypes and win32com to manipulate and edit PDF files.
I don't recommend it for Acrobat. There is no programming hell like trying to decipher and comprehend the Adobe PDF format. It's like putting your hand in a burlap bag filled with angry hissing cats. There is no way you pull out your hand without receiving a few scratches.
That said, there is nothing quite as satisfying as giving Adobe (who refuses to include commandline batching abilities in a program that costs a few hundred dollars) a giant middle finger by watching Acrobat happily chew through a few thousand files. So maybe it was worth it.
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u/boatsnbros Dec 16 '17
Have a look at xlwings - afaik it is essentially a python wrapper for win32. I use it w/ pyodbc for Microsoft SQL Server for workflow automation and have almost no complaints once you get used to it.
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u/CryptoTheGrey Dec 15 '17
This seems ridiculous to me. The more python and R i learn the less spreadsheet processing i do. I don't think i am unique in this; it seems to be a logical end. Who actually benefits from this in the end?
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Dec 15 '17
Us superusers/programmers who have to make or prepare spreadsheets for other people who thinks GNU is nothing but an animal (and nothing else).
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u/havoc313 Dec 14 '17
I would like this to happen. I like both excel and python but I hate VBA and if they were integrated I would be a happy lad.
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u/Studentik Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
my humble wishlist:
Record Excel macros in python
Autocomplete feature in PyCharm for Excel object model (same as in VBA)
Excel headless execution for workflow automation
Excel as reporting server
Excel at Linux natively
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u/GodsLove1488 Dec 14 '17
Oh fuck yeah........ I use xlwings when I absolutely have to (i.e. a VBA solution is a pain in the ass) but native support would be incredible.
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Dec 14 '17
As someone who works in Excel a lot but doesn't know any VBA because it's godawful (imo), where should I start if I want to use Python in Excel today? Especially if I make the same report each month (consolidates the same data and is formatted the same way) but wanted the option to enhance it.
Native Python in Excel definitely interests me but it sounds like I can use it now.
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u/lcota Dec 14 '17
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u/gattia Dec 15 '17
I found the easiest way to read and write excel files is using the pandas.read_excel() function.
I’ve found all other excel integration to be a pain in the ass.
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Dec 15 '17
If you just need it for basic data manipulation, check out openpyxl. Pandas is a fantastic data analysis library that can do a whole heck of a lot, but if you don't need all the bells and whistles, go with openpyxl
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u/boatsnbros Dec 16 '17
My reporting stack is: Pyodbc pulling from SQL databases Cleaning, munging and analysis in python (pandas + scipy) Writing to excel with xlwings (highly recommended) emailing with python.
Set up templates, click a button to email clients report. Easy.
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u/willvintage Dec 14 '17
Thanks for the heads up. Filled the survey. This will become very useful when they roll it to the online version.
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u/Sensanmu Dec 15 '17
Correct me if I’m wrong, will Python wholly replace VBA?
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u/PragMalice Dec 15 '17
Highly doubtful. There's an embarrassing amount of business logic that relies on decade(s) old VBA scripts... it's nowhere near as prolific as legacy COBOL code, but the enterprise world would literally bring out their pitchforks and sacrifice some MS peeps if/when VBA was finally given the ax.
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Dec 15 '17
Hello,
I’m an analysis who works for a company with a very outdated IT infrastructure. I would love to work with python but our IT VP thinks it’s for hacking and all Work has to be in excel. As such my days are drowning in VBA and VBA caused tears. If excel integrates python will I still need the compiler?
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u/liamcoded Dec 15 '17
One step at a time. Your first problem is dealing with that IT VP of yours. I encourage you to think about assassination.
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u/boatsnbros Dec 16 '17
Use xlwings to write to excel. Do all your workflow in python, just output to excel for distribution. Yes it's slower initially, but once you have a good utilities deck set up you can automate the shit out of your daily workflow.
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u/crybannanna Dec 15 '17
This would be awesome, because then I could finally learn python. I’ve found it a bit difficult to figure out, and rely on VBA.
I’m ready to step up my game. Though I sure hope they don’t remove vba entirely, or I’m going to have some problems.
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u/other_bored_sysadmin Dec 15 '17
Python is WAY EASIER to learn than VBA.
Try learning with this book first. It's aimed to common people who don't necessarily want to become programmers.
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u/MurtBacklin-BFI Dec 15 '17
Python is dope, so yes!
But also anyone using excel should checkout python libraries if you're already python proficient. Plenty of great graphing tools and libraries like pandas for excel replacement. Not to say excel doesn't have its place, just if you're already using python -- don't give yourself more headache if you can do what you need in python 👍
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u/stackered Dec 15 '17
this could be a game changer tbh. I love the UI of excel but I code and do a lot of data work with Python. sometimes I still use excel to do some stuff... this combo will be very powerful IMO
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u/foadsf Dec 15 '17
Microsoft is going in the right direction. Yesterday OpenSSH and now python. Thanks.
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u/bitcycle Dec 15 '17
My input:
Yes, please. For the love of all that is technically right, good and true -- do the needful and add Python support to Excel.
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u/dire_faol Dec 14 '17
Why not just learn pandas?
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u/boatsnbros Dec 16 '17
You can't send a detailed, conditionally formatted report with pandas. By writing to excel you can. Especially if you use python to do base level calculations, then use python to write functions into excel at a higher level so people looking at the report can understand what you are calculating and why.
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Dec 15 '17
I see this answer a lot. People on /r/python love pandas. No question pandas beats a basic library like openyxl in breadth of functionality, but if you don't need all of that, why not stick with something simpler?
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u/cmcqueen1975 Dec 14 '17
About 8 years ago, I was doing work to control Excel from Python, via Excel's COM interface. But I found Excel's COM interface to be awkward and surprisingly slow.
I guess MS is interested in a tighter integration, so Excel can run Python code, similar to VBA macros?
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Dec 15 '17
Keep the Excel object model as it is in VBA, but with Python supported would be dope. I like VBA too though, don't care what the hipsters think.
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u/attrigh Dec 15 '17
For those who are unwilling to wait for this there are (commercial) plugins that already provide this sort of functionality:
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Dec 15 '17
VBA is annoying because it's so esoteric. I don't feel like learning it just to write excel macros, it's too narrowly applicable to justify the time spent.
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u/nikniuq Dec 15 '17
It would be nice if they didn't Fuck it up yet again.
If python is a motor, chassis and wheels I can't help but feel that we will end up with excel nailed to a plank of wood, two ice skates and a harnessed fish.
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Dec 15 '17
Kinda off topic but anyone here got some good resources for dealing with excel through R? I haven't found anything good yet.
Part of the reason I'm learning python is to get around this kinda situation
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Dec 15 '17
How are they going to solve the backwards compatibility problem? Will they have a tool to automatically convert VB to Python code?
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Dec 15 '17
Thankfully, too late, I don't have to wallow in MS' crap anymore. Also, one hardly needs Excel at all these days with Python, pandas and numpy: http://pbpython.com/excel-pandas-comp.html
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u/jugalator Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
Wow, this is big!
It's not just about Excel but in extent an alternative to VBA for Office applications. "Politically" speaking it's also Microsoft showing acceptance of Python as a scripting language for Windows applications, or perhaps (hopefully) even Windows itself.
I of course applaud this, but also hope for a next step being integrating Python as an official Windows Script Host engine.
The road towards an open scripting language backing multiple platforms has been to damn long. I think that on Windows scripting in general is pretty terrible. You have the old WSH engines for VB and JScript (!= Javascript) that are barely looked at and more like in maintenance mode since a decade, and otherwise Powershell scripting with an obnoxious Powershell-only syntax and unorthodox return semantics. Why oh why they never simply did a CS-Script with maybe syntax sugar extensions for command line oriented features like piping and command line parsing, usage help, rather than the Powershell language is beyond me. C# since it got DLR enabled is pretty convenient to use for short snippets of script code anyway, and Roslyn makes C# scripting enabled.
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Dec 15 '17
Woohoo!
I really like excel but VB sucks the big way - so, input - do it right and we'll documented.
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u/liamcoded Dec 15 '17
I say you should all go back to COBOL or Fortran or whatever else most developers really hate. That will put you in your place.
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u/import_awesome Dec 15 '17
I've been doing my spreadsheets with python itself for years. It's a pretty simple class to implement. If you want a grid front end a flask web front end is pretty easy to add.
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u/0fckoff Dec 15 '17
Python replace VBA or will VBA remain?
Why Excel and not Office (why keep VBA for Word, Access and Outlook)?
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u/IcanCwhatUsay Noob Dec 15 '17
Nah, I'd rather Excel use a standalone scripting language that's almost impossible to learn without taking proper classes.
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u/speel Dec 14 '17
From a security standpoint..please don’t.
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Dec 14 '17
VBA already has that problem. Only difference is that the malicious VBA code might be more of a pain to write
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u/szpaceSZ Dec 14 '17
This would be the single best thing that could happen to excel!
Also, be careful of your beloved Python will be hijacked!
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u/waterlesscloud Dec 14 '17
I'm curious if white space is more or less of an issue for non-programmers.
I honestly don't know.
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Dec 14 '17
I think non-programmers tend to be less opinionated about that sort of thing when they dip into programming.
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u/liamcoded Dec 15 '17
I really don't get that whole issue developers have with white space. How hard can it be to get used to such a simple formatting. I am not a professional developer because i suck at it but white space makes it easier. What I hate are all the weird symbols and curly braces. Dear God how much I hate curly braces. It's just visual noise. And really, you have to hit shift + square bracket to get a curly braces. Why not just use square brackets?
I also know verboseness is something looked down on by developers but it's so much easier to read. Yes I know it takes time to write such a code but I can actually figure it out what it does and not have to ask developers same questions over and over again.
Not to mention damn JavaScript with their recent ES6 change. Finding a word "function" is so much easier than finding a =>.
End rant.
1
u/dsn0wman Dec 14 '17
I'd prefer to not have this happen. It will just cause more people to think excel is a database.
4
u/hoocoodanode Dec 15 '17
I think many small companies are guilty of this before they actually invest in a database, usually spurred on by some sort of catastrophic data loss.
On the plus side, having python in excel could simplify the migration to the database.
1
u/kaidokuuppa Dec 15 '17
It really baffles me why MS Excel don't go with F#. It feels such a natural choice.
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u/Chilangosta Dec 14 '17
Link here to respond to the survey.