Microsoft is overhauling Excel and giving it the ability to support custom live data types. The Excel spreadsheet has been utilised as a tool to import, organize, and analyse data, however, the basic data types have been limited to text and numbers.
Although Microsoft had previously added dynamic arrays, custom stocks and geography data types, it’s now updating Excel to allow users to import their own data as a custom data type.
The company is introducing over 100 new data types into Excel for Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscribers. This will allow users to track stocks, input a variety of data using data from Wolfram Alpha’s service. The feature is available for Office beta testers in the Insiders program at the moment.
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Microsoft is leveraging its Power BI service to connect data sources into Excel data types on the commercial side. This will give businesses the privilege of connecting to a variety of data. Additionally, it will make data analysis even easier as businesses will also be able to convert existing cells into linked data types.
You can now transform imported data into a data type using Power Query. The data could be information from files, databases, websites, etc. After importing the data, it can be cleaned up and converted into a data type to be used in spreadsheets.
These new Power BI data types will be available in Excel for Windows for all Microsoft 365/Office 365 subscribers who also have a Power BI Pro service plan. Microsoft is also rolling out Power Query data types to subscribers. Wolfram Alpha data types are available in preview for beta testers and should roll out to all Microsoft 365 subscribers soon.
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