View all. Some tasks, such as exploratory data analysis, are best handled through Python or R programming. Python is designed for real-time calculations and Excel is better for advanced data ...

Python and Excel can only really talk to each other through limited functions—xl() and =PY()—that can only return code results, not macros, VBA code, or other data, Microsoft claims.

It pairs Python’s data analysis and visualization libraries with Excel’s features, plus the ability to call Python analytics from Anaconda’s enterprise-grade Python distribution hub.