Python for Excel, 2nd Edition

Preface

A Note for Early Release Readers

With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official release of these titles.

This will be the Preface of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made active later on.

If you’d like to be actively involved in reviewing and commenting on this draft, please reach out to the editor at [e-mail].

“Yeah, so I helped the Excel team with this. Excited that it’s out!” This was the message that Guido van Rossum—​the creator of Python and, at the time, a Microsoft employee—​posted on X on August 22, 2023. His post included a link to the official announcement of Python in Excel. So how did we get here?

In the early days of Excel, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) was the only choice to program and extend Microsoft Excel as an end user. VBA is a one-stop shop, as it allows you to:

• Write macros that run at the click of a button, e.g., to add a new worksheet with a report

• Write custom functions (also called user-defined functions) that you can call from worksheet cells

• Build your own add-ins to provide automation features and custom functions across workbooks

With the growing importance of the internet and mobile platforms, Microsoft had to make Excel work across these new environments. Today, Excel runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and—​most importantly—​on the web. However, ...