this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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There are things that could be done to improve Excel. For instance, fully integrate python and allow it to be used to create custom functions. Then, maybe one day, VBA can ride off into the sunset where it belongs.
Adding Copilot to Excel is not an improvement because Copilot and all other LLM based platforms frequently barfs out totally incorrect information about how to do something in Excel.
"You do that using formula."
No, I can't, you worthless pile of shit because THAT FORMULA DOESNT EXIST.
Integrated python scripts in excel sounds like a malware developers dream.
They foresaw that. That's because python on Excel doesn't run locally, but in the cloud and then returns the result to you: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-python-in-excel-55643c2e-ff56-4168-b1ce-9428c8308545
Still sounds like you'd be shipping your data to the cloud, where it can be exfilled from there.
Would potentially be a great phishing tool, just need to trick someone into putting sensitive data into a precooked excel file, and it gets exfilled.
Currently only for business customers which probably use OneDrive or SharePoint anyways, so it's not that they need that to exfiltrate data. But for a phishing/hacking attempt? There are probably some nice possibilities.