Anaconda, the maker and distributor of data science tools, has unleashed a public beta of Anaconda Code that enables Python code to be run locally within Microsoft Excel.
Anaconda Code is part of the Anaconda Toolbox, an Excel add-in that provides data connectors, data visualization, AI assistance, and code snippets for Python code in Excel.
Based on PyScript, Anaconda Code improves upon the snake-named company's Python in Excel offering from 2023 which ran code remotely in Microsoft Azure. While Azure hosting obviates the potential complexity of tending Python instances on personal hardware, not everyone appreciates cloud dependency.
"With Anaconda Code, we're giving users freedom to control the environment," said Peter Wang, co-founder and Chief AI Innovation Officer at Anaconda, in a statement. "This release marks a significant step forward, enabling Excel users to harness Python's vast ecosystem while maintaining the speed, reliability and accessibility that businesses and individuals have come to expect from their data tools."
Anaconda sees the software as a way to give Excel users wider access to the Python ecosystem and its various data analysis tools within the comfort of a familiar spreadsheet. There are other ways to run Python in Excel, eg: PyXLL.
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Alas, like pickles and peanut butter, or democracy and billionaires, not everyone is entirely sold on the combination of Excel and Python.
Felix Zumstein, managing partner for xlwings, a Python library for calling Python code from Excel, argued in a blog post last month that Python in Excel was a misfire because it doesn't serve as a scripting language nor support user-defined functions.
"Unfortunately, Python in Excel doesn’t support either of these two features," he wrote. "Instead of being an alternative to [Visual Basic for Applications], it’s designed to be an alternative to the Excel formula language. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Excel’s formula language, Python in Excel is really just a 2-dimensional Jupyter notebook inside the Excel grid.
Zumstein, who wrote a book called Python in Excel in 2021, contends that the Anaconda/Microsoft Python in Excel should have integrated a Jupyter notebook into an Excel task pane instead of putting notebook cells inside the grid.
He went on to outline plans to develop a local option called "xlwings script" that's based on Web Assembly (WASM). This would involve connecting Python running under WASM to the Excel object model with the help of PyScript. He added this would likely take a few months.
A month later, Anaconda Code is doing something similar.
The Anaconda Toolbox requires an anaconda.cloud account. It's free while in public beta. Future pricing has not been disclosed. ®