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

        • Kaloi@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I was just going to ask how long before Libreoffice has local python scripting. Of course it already has it and MS is copying them in a shittier way, silly me.

        • RheingoldRiver@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          GSheets lets you run python code? I thought they were all js-based

          edit: I misread, you’re saying LibreOffice has Python support, nvm

          • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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            They don’t let you write custom JS scripts, at least not without hacks AFAIK. We are talking about scripting languages for macros like Office’s infamous VBA.

            • RheingoldRiver@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I think what they let you do is write mini add-ons using the API and support JS in an in-browser editor. Then you have to enable the add-ons. I guess equivalently you can do the same things with an IDE and any language, but it felt like they “officially” supported JS.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The difference is Microsoft will feed your scripts into training its AI.

      • nottheengineer@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Microsoft is stupid, but not too stupid to realize that Excel users are generally tech-illiterate and most of them will produce garbage code.

  • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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    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.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      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.

    • Master@lemm.ee
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      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.ml
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        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.

        • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org
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          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.

        • heyoni@lemm.ee
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          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.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          But Micro$oft never implement any permission system or checks for Visual Basic in Office so any macro can use anything the user has access to. If the scripting language could only access its document’s content in an undoable way without explicit permissions such as to use the filesystem and Internet or modify the Normal template (as opposed to the current system, which does not differentiate between useful scripts and malware and can easily be bypassed by social engineering), the risk would largely be mitigated but Micro$oft does not care.

    • mrsgreenpotato@discuss.tchncs.de
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      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.ml
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        1 year ago

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

        • mrsgreenpotato@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 year ago

          Fair point, maybe I replied to a wrong comment. Nonetheless, I’ve seen comments saying “just use native Python”. Not everyone can do that.

      • Urbanfox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This happened in my old place - also on the business side. Asked for python, got it, then had it immediately removed because of security risks.

        I told the head that I could still access tables and shit via excel if I wanted so what does it matter? He didn’t realise this, and asked that I told no-one else it could be done. FFS.

    • looeee@lemmy.world
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      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
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        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.

  • just_change_it@lemmy.world
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    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.de
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      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.

  • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Surprising no one. You can’t even autosave files in Office software anymore unless you use OneDrive.

    • affiliate@lemmy.world
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      unfortunately the local storage technology just isn’t there yet. we have to rely on the magic of the cloud to handle complex things like auto saving files and running python interpreters

          • warbond@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            In general I think emojis add nonverbal context clues to conversations and in my experience are a valuable tool for conveying information quickly. I’m seeing them used in all but the most formal of cases in a work environment and I don’t think that particular train is going to be stopping anytime soon.

            • And009@reddthat.com
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              1 year ago

              That gives me a great idea to design emojis for corporate use. The ones that we have are unsuitable but like you said… They add a layer of communication

    • ZodiacSF1969@sh.itjust.works
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      Yeh that pisses me off. When I looked that up, I saw that on the Microsoft help forums their response was ‘well, you never really had that feature locally anyway’.

  • Kethal@lemmy.world
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    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.

  • Eheran@lemmy.world
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    Holy shit Excel is still like it was 20 years ago. And now, when they want to add such a useful feature, it comes with that bag of crap with it? Fucking hell. I know why I switched all non-trivial stuff to python.

    Defining reusable functions? Diagrams with parametric ranges? (Only the title can be a cell reference, nothing else) Zooming in diagrams? More than 1 x axis? More than 2 y axis? …

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      Even a basic thing like XY scatter plots is absolutely terrible. I had made dozens of them before but in 365, when I selected the data and clicked “Scatter Plot”, it refused to assign the left column to X and the right to Y. I fought for 10 minutes with “Chart Series” and then gave up to look up the solution. Also very few trendline functions are available, the default axes look like crap and min/max is broken for logarithmic charts.

      Not to mention that one third of all options is in a keyboard-unfriendly, laggy “responsive” UI while the rest is in windows that barely changed since 1995, and are completely missing in the web version. Localization has only become sloppier and you want centimeters rather than inches in Office Online? Fuck you.

      • Eheran@lemmy.world
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        Oh those numbers? That is a date. I will delete the original numbers and replace it with something else. Good luck.

        Excel is one of those examples of a software that is only used everywhere because it used to be the best and it is overall not bad. So “everyone” already knows it and the incentive to move to something else is fairly small, because it would only be so much better. But still, why are they not developing it further? Completely crazy.

        • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          I feel like excel is still used everywhere because it’s the kind of Jack of all trades.

          There is a better alternative for all the applications excel is used for but no alternative that can do all at once.

          • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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            1 year ago

            LibreOffice? I mean some features are missing but I don’t see why you’d need them

            • barfplanet@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Maybe it’s because I’m so accustomed to Excel, but Libreoffice Calc is so painful to use. Not the app that’s going to win people over.

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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          Not developing it further? They are bound to their shortsightedly developed xlsx format and they need to make sure legacy stuff doesn’t break… However, the Win11-style redesign is a regression, and the Czech spell checker has been flagging a completely normal verb class as ancient for years, and the heavily-touted Web Sources cannot even parse JSON. They also keep adding shit like Online Images (with Bing), automatic image recognition that I imagine collects shitloads of AI training data and of course support links that only open in Edge even though it works no better than your default browser. I wonder where the prosecutors who brought M$ to court for bundling IE with W95 are today.

          • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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            Unfortunately that case only ended in an order for Microsoft to share its API for at least 5 years and for the DOJ to have full access to MS stuff including source code during this time

      • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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        1 year ago

        I agree with the rest but I think the ribbon concept itself is nice and they actually updated the UI for Windows 11

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          I like Ribbon too but the Home tab keeps getting used to give spotlight to rather unimportant new features. Also, the Windows 11 redesign is horrible, the buttons are spaced out too far. At home, I use my old legal copy of Office 2007 via Wine of I need to correctly open Office files while getting used to the messy icons and dropdowns of LibreOffice.

          • Aatube@kbin.socialOP
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            1 year ago

            LibreOffice also has a ribbon. Just go to View → User Interface and select “Tabbed Bar” or something like that. I like contextual groups (which needs experimental features enabled, unfortunately) better since it’s like the MS office “group descriptions” but it isn’t fully suited for Impress yet so groupedbar (non-compact version also experimental) is a nice middle ground.

    • venusenvy47@lemdro.id
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      1 year ago

      Does xlwings require any specific Python installation? Can I use it with my WinPython 3.10 installation on Windows 10?