Hi all! I've previously written about why I wasn't a big fan of Microsoft's "Python in Excel" solution for using Python with Excel, see the Reddit discussion. Instead of just complaining, I have now published the "xlwings Lite" add-in, which you can install for free for both personal and commercial use via Excel's add-in store. I have made a video walkthrough, or you can check out the documentation.

xlwings Lite allows analysts, engineers, and other advanced Excel users to program their custom functions ("UDFs") and automation scripts ("macros") in Python instead of VBA. Unlike the classic open-source xlwings, it does not require a local Python installation and stores the Python code inside Excel for easy distribution. So the only requirement is to have the xlwings Lite add-in installed.

So what are the main differences from Microsoft's Python in Excel (PiE) solution?

• PiE runs in the cloud, xlwings Lite runs locally (via Pyodide/WebAssembly), respecting your privacy

• PiE has no access to the excel object model, xlwings Lite does have access, allowing you to insert new sheets, format data as an Excel table, set the color of a cell, etc.

• PiE turns Excel cells into Jupyter notebook cells and introduces a left to right and top to bottom execution order. xlwings Lite instead allows you to define native custom functions/UDFs.

• PiE has daily and monthly quota limits, xlwings Lite doesn't have any usage limits

• PiE has a fixed set of packages, xlwings Lite allows you to install your own set of Python packages

• PiE is only available for Microsoft 365, xlwings Lite is available for Microsoft 356 and recent versions of permanent Office licenses like Office 2024

• PiE doesn't allow web API requests, whereas xlwings Lite does.