In recent years, Microsoft has been integrating “data types” into Excel, enabling features like importing geographical information and current stock prices directly from online sources. Through collaboration with Wolfram, Excel now supports over 100 of these data types that can be seamlessly integrated into spreadsheets. However, users will soon have the ability to extend beyond these pre-defined options by creating and importing their own custom data types.

This advancement will allow for the creation of a “customer” data type, for instance, which can incorporate detailed customer information from external services directly into Excel. This functionality is facilitated through either Power BI, enabling Excel to access data previously published within Power BI, or through Excel’s built-in Power Query feature. Power Query provides connectivity to a diverse range of data sources, encompassing popular databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, alongside third-party platforms like Teradata and Facebook.

According to Brian Jones, Microsoft’s Excel product lead, the Excel grid has traditionally been a two-dimensional space. “Users have been able to arrange numbers, text, and formulas within this grid to create impressive solutions. However, not all data is best represented in a flat structure, and this limitation has presented challenges. Data Types introduce a third dimension to Excel, allowing each cell to contain a comprehensive set of structured data within a single cell.”

This development is expected to significantly enhance Excel’s versatility, and many organizations are likely to adopt these new capabilities. While a shift to alternative tools like Airtable isn’t anticipated in the near future, the increasing volume of data collected by businesses creates a growing need for more sophisticated data analysis features. Currently, this functionality is unique to Excel and not available in competing products such as Google Sheets.