Excel Gets Local Python Boost With Anaconda Code
Anaconda has developed a new local experience for Python in Microsoft Excel, allowing users to run Python code within Excel spreadsheets without an internet connection.
Today, Anaconda announced the public beta release of Anaconda Code within its Anaconda Toolbox for Excel. Anaconda Code empowers users to write Python code directly within Excel and run it locally.
Peter Wang, Anaconda’s co-founder and chief of AI and innovation, told The New Stack that the company created this capability “to support one of the most requested features that early users and customers had, which is that, they like the ability of being able to do Python in Excel, but for a variety of reasons they may want to be running that locally, within their on their own machine, versus having that connection to Azure.”
Anaconda introduced Python in Excel in August of last year to enable users to perform data manipulation, analysis, and visualization, as well as advanced machine learning and AI tasks, directly within Excel spreadsheets. But until now, the Python code would run on Microsoft Azure’s secure cloud servers.
WebAssembly, JavaScript Connection
To provide Python in Excel locally, Anaconda used Microsoft’s standard, existing Excel plugin capabilities, and applied their own Python on WebAssembly (WASM) technology called PyScript, which is primarily targeted towards the use case of running Python as a peer language to JavaScript in the browser.
“If there is a Python interpreter in Excel, then we could run PythonMonkey in it, and therefore open JavaScript up inside Excel as well potentially. Probably do the reverse in Google Sheets as well, Dan Desjardins, CEO and co-founder of Distributive, the maker of the PythonMonkey Python library for executing JavaScript in Python, told The New Stack.
Indeed, wherever there’s Python, you also have JavaScript for free via PythonMonkey; compounding value and use cases, he noted.
“Anaconda Code’s local runtime is powered by Anaconda’s open source PyScript technology, which uses WASM, to run Python locally on your computer through any browser,” Wang told the New Stack. “Excel Add-Ins are browser-based panes that interact with and run in Excel. Anaconda Code creates the local Python WASM runtime and your code is run securely and locally. You can write your Python code in the add-in and the results are displayed in Excel.”
Early User Perspective
Meanwhile, Owen Price, a Microsoft MVP and trusted voice of the Python in Excel community, just happened to start working at Anaconda this week, said he first used Anaconda Toolbox during the early preview last year, keen to understand what tools were on offer to enhance the Python experience in Excel.
“It’s a significant add-in for Excel users looking to level up and harness the additional power and convenience of Python in Excel,” he told The New Stack. “In particular, the visualization tools will be a massive help for users. People are going to love the ability to save their code and have it portable between workbooks.”
Moreover, “Anaconda Code will be a huge help to those with perhaps a little more experience with Python who want to customize their environment and make use of a tailored set of packages for their specific use cases,” Price said. “All of this integrated with Excel allows users to be more efficient and productive while removing the work of environment management, giving them more time to solve complex problems.”
Key Features
Excel users with Anaconda Toolbox will now have access to:
- Anaconda Assistant: Utilize AI to analyze tables and suggest data handling methods with history following users across workbooks for consistent code use.
- Code Snippet Management: Write, save, and share Python code snippets directly within Excel, enhancing productivity and collaboration.
- Advanced Visualizations: Create powerful data visualizations using accessible templates and libraries, easily integrated into Excel worksheets.
- Streamlined Data Handling: Use data connectors to access, analyze, and share data in Excel workbooks or Anaconda.cloud notebooks with improved versioning to ensure access to the most current datasets.
The Anaconda Toolbox in Excel makes Python accessible to all users, enabling code generation, efficient visualizations, and seamless collaboration through Anaconda.cloud notebooks.
Democratizing Python Use Within Microsoft Excel
Wang estimated that there are we have something like 40 to 50 million Anaconda (read Python) users, but Excel has hundreds of millions of users, he noted.
“Many of them don’t know how to code, but they do know how to think. They do care about data. They care about reasoning and what’s happening in their business, what’s happening in their supply chain,” Wang said. “There are a lot of scientists and engineers who don’t code, but who are brilliant, and they use Excel as a tool for looking at data. At my first job as a quantum physicist, my quantum physics mentor at Los Alamos National Lab, preferred to use Excel primarily to look at all this data coming off of the trifold quantum computer.
“So there are many people out there for whom Excel is a natural tool, and that’s why I think, when we can take Python, which we use to democratize data analysis for lots of people, and we can embed it into Excel, we can then add more power to all these people who are already in that environment.”
Wang said Anaconda Toolbox for Excel allows users of all skill levels to generate code and create visualizations efficiently, while simultaneously learning Python.
“Between Microsoft and Anaconda, a premise seems to have emerged that anything doable in a notebook should be doable in an Excel workbook as well,” Andrew Brust, founder and CEO of Blue Badge Insights, told The New Stack. “At the foundation, that means data access, transformation, preparation, and visualization; on the AI side, it means machine learning (both training and inference) and even generative AI/RAG. Jupyter and other notebook platforms have established robust ecosystems.
“But Excel has a developer ecosystem of its own, going back to the days of macros, XLLs, and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Rather than leaving the two worlds siloed, it makes sense to mash them up, since spreadsheet jockeys and data scientists coding in Python both work with formulas, datasets, models and visualizations.”
Brad Shimmin, an analyst at Omdia, said he believes the new Anaconda tool is ideal for core Excel users. Still, he would rather use Jupyter Notebooks and Pandas and NumPy or Python in VS Code for his data manipulation needs.
