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You get it, "record macro" is the key to this. MS could switch them to C# or JS or python or whatever, if they just added a button which did that.


This is the interesting thing. I haven't played with it myself but seems MS is trying that with their new Beta python script function, but their implementation is just crazy, completely handicapped. Can't see it being a true replacement for VBA in excel.


I think proper Python macros is one thing LibreOffice could have implemented years ago, to help attract people and break MS near monopoly on spreadsheets. It exists today, but last time I tried felt very hacky. There was no proper macro editor for it, IIRC you had to extract spreadsheets as if they were zip files and save .py written elsewhere in directories inside. Very cumbersome.


Wasn't aware of this, thanks. I'll give it a try. It's at least a good place to try different things with Python.


I haven't investigated the python implementation at all since i no longer work with VBA and or Excel in that fashion anymore. How have they handicapped it?


The code is executed remotely on Microsoft's servers (I can see many organizations just turning this feature off for all staff). I'm open to correction, can't see it in any of the demos, but the code it seems is also entered within a cell, it's not clear whether the output can manipulate/overwrite pre-existing cells as a result or it needs to have its own separate output.


Agree, Python implementation in Excel is trash. Not at all a competitor for VBA. Not yet anyway.


Microsoft recently released OfficeScripts, which are JS with a record macro button. Problem is, it's currently too limiting. Will be good in a few decades though if support isn't dropped.




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