Roadmap

xlwings Lite is in an early stage. A few of the planned enhancements include (not in any specific order):

• Enable access to local files.

• Add an interactive Python terminal.

• Add AI coding support similar to Excel’s Copilot.

• Allow to use multiple Python modules.

• Make it easy to work with a set of scripts/funcs across workbooks, similar to how Personal Macro Workbook works in VBA.

• Allow to use a Jupyter/marimo notebook instead of a normal Python file.

• Custom functions: add support for streaming functions and object handles.

• Custom scripts: Scripts don’t allow to interact with Excel’s calculated values. This means that you currently can’t trigger an Excel calculation in a script and use its result in the same script.

• Show printed output live, instead of when the script/function terminates.

• Improve the coverage of the Excel object model, especially with formatting and charting.

• Integrate Git version control.

• Optionally allow to store the Python code externally like Office Scripts do.

• Allow to change the Pyodide version.

• Improve code completion and code navigation.

• Add dark mode.

• Add the ability to switch from Pyodide to a full Python installation on a backend server such as Azure functions.

• ✅ Add a secure way to deal with secrets (environment variables).

• ✅ Allow to run scripts from buttons on the Excel sheet.

• ✅ Custom scripts: Currently, the content of the whole workbook is transferred to the Python runtime even if it’s not required. This makes scripts slow when the workbook is very big.