Microsoft will significantly expand the capabilities of its Excel spreadsheet: Users will be provided with a JavaScript API that will allow them to include a much wider range of data types in their calculations than before.
For a long time, Excel basically only had numbers and text as data types. In recent years, however, some ready-made extensions were added. Users could now also obtain various information from external sources in the cloud, which are available in data types that cover, for example, geographical information or special formats of business data. Now, however, Microsoft is making this a big step further. At the Ignite conference, the company now presented the upcoming JavaScript API.
The integration of the scripting language will make it much easier for users with programming skills to define data types themselves according to their needs and insert them into their tables. Whether special numerical values, matrices, or even images and the like – basically anything that can be mapped in programming is possible.
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What can go wrong? Of course, this also means that the respective data types can be stored with their own functions that are written in JavaScript. In this way, powerful extensions for everyday work can be created, especially in the corporate environment, which goes far beyond the macros that have been possible up to now.
However, this of course directly raises the question of security. Even the limited macro functions have been used again and again in the past to attack PCs via manipulated documents. If the malware developers now have the complete possibilities of JavaScripts at their disposal, they will have even more extensive options. Here it remains to be seen how Microsoft can keep the matter under control. The new JavaScript API is to be made available in the form of a preview version before the end of November. The company has not yet given a time frame for the completion of the final implementation.
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