Microsoft added a bunch of useful capabilities to Excel this month, including one that was highly requested by customers.

Excel’s built-in Python support should simplify the workflow. According to Microsoft, users can add Python code to a spreadsheet without leaving the Excel interface.

With LAMBDA, the Excel formula language is Turing-complete. User-defined functions can thus compute anything without resorting to imperative languages (e.g., VBA, JavaScript) ...

Beyond Excel, the team also took inspiration from tools and languages like Pascal, Mathematica and Miranda, a functional programming language developed in the 1980s.

Analyze uses natural-language tools and automatic-programming-generation techniques to allow users to perform basic calculations and other analytic tasks inside Excel spreadsheets.