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I'm an Excel power user. I think Microsoft is moving in the right direction, with the addition of Tables, PowerBI, PowerPivot and R in SQL Server. What I'd like to see in Excel is:

Hotkey training built into Excel Python as an optional language along side VBA Proper Data Tables with Types and Indices, or even SQL in Excel. Regex Search over Columns PowerPivot use case training Web publishing of reports made stupid easy

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Both Python and R can be used in Excel via several addons.

Python:

http://www.python-excel.org/

https://www.xlwings.org/

https://datanitro.com/

R:

http://rcom.univie.ac.at/download.html

https://bert-toolkit.com/

However, officially MS have chosen to move ahead with Javascript for add-ins and VBA-like automation:

https://dev.office.com/docs/add-ins/develop/understanding-th...

http://rockthecode.io/blog/javascript-and-excel/

As for SQL, you can use Data Connections from the GUI or ADO with JET/ACE in VBA to query Excel sheets, CSVs, etc as you please.

Regex can be used with the VBScript.Regexp object, but it's a slightly funky (perl-like) syntax and not a great implementation.

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