Announcing Office Scripts (Preview)
Published Jan 07 2020 08:18 AM 67.4K Views
Microsoft

 

Today we are announcing the availability of a public preview of Office Scripts in Excel on the web. Office Scripts is a feature that enables users with all levels of Excel experiencefrom beginner users to those with advanced coding expertiseto record scripts and automate their tasks. Over the coming weeks, this preview will be rolling out to organizations with Office 365. Get started by opting into the preview within the Microsoft 365 admin center, and create new automations using the script recorder and editor functionality. 

 

What is Office Scripts? 
 

With Office Scripts, you can automate tasks and workflows easily, and eliminate the need for repetitive steps as you create and manage workbooks. When the preview is enabled within your Office 365 environment, you can start creating Office Scripts by clicking the Record Actions button in the Automate tab, record the actions desired, stop the recorder, and then save the script.  Once a script is created you have the capability to run the script manually on Excel workbooks you have access to. Because the script is saved to OneDrive for Business, they can be easily reused across workbooks.  

 

Let’s see it in action:  

 teaser-animation

 

Users with all levels of programming experience can get started with script creation. It uses modern, developer-friendly technologies such as JavaScript so these scripts can be easily customized with existing - or new and growing – developer skills.  To edit your scripts, use a full TypeScript-based editor directly within Excel on the web to tailor the scripts you have recorded. Finally, administrators will be able to enforce governance policies around how Office scripts can run. 

 

Office Scripts will empower you to easily automate tasks and processes, allowing you to manage tasks efficiently anytime and anywhere, including within Excel on the web. Get started with the preview of Office Scripts for Excel on the web – we look forward to your feedback. 

 

Learn More 

You can learn more about Office Scripts from these resources: 

How do I get Office Scripts? 

Office Scripts will be rolling out over the next few weeks to Excel users who have Office 365 E3 and E5 licenses. Gradual roll outs allow us to gather feedback and ensure feature quality. During this initial preview, Office Scripts will only be available in Excel on the web, though we will look to bring Office Scripts to other Excel endpoints. Office Scripts will need to enabled through the admin center and will become visible in tenants as the feature rolls out. The feature can be enabled by following the steps below: 

 

  1. Go to admin center. 
  2. Select Settings > Settings and then choose Office Scripts from the list. 
  3. Check the “Let users automate their tasks in Office on the web” box in the Office Scripts panel and save changes. 
 

Note: Office Scripts is not currently available in Internet Explorer. 

 
To stay connected to Excel and its community, read the Excel blog posts and send us ideas and suggestions via UserVoice or post your questions about how to create a script via StackOverflow using the “office-scripts” tag. You can also follow Excel on Facebook and Twitter.  

34 Comments
Steel Contributor

FWIW, it is under Settings|Settings in my Office 365 admin panel. There is no "Services and Addins" and Office Scripts is not under the Add-ins section. I think there are different views of the admin panel depending on what admins have opted into.

Brass Contributor

Great, I hope to support more devices, more apps of Office Script.

  • more devices = PC, Phone, and more
  • more apps = PowerPoint, Word, and more

@Ed Hansberry , yes, that is old or new admin center, setting is on top right of practically each screen

image.png

 

Microsoft

Are Office Scripts targeting to replace/supercede VB Macros eventually? 

Brass Contributor

This sounds like the existing macros feature?  If so, how does the Office Scripts differ?

Copper Contributor

I have been learning how to work with the Office JavaScript API during last months and this is amazing!!!

 

How do I know if my Office365 licence is E3 or E5?

@Jose Santos , perhaps the only way is to ask your tenant admin, they are responsible for corporate licenses distribution.

Microsoft

@Jose Santos  - go to this URL and it will show you which licenses are assigned to your Office 365 work account. https://portal.office.com/account/?ref=MeControl#subscriptions

Copper Contributor
I would much rather have C# as the scripting language. I view JavaScript, even with TypeScript support, as a step backwards from statically typed VBA.
Copper Contributor

This will replace VBA Macros eventually?

Copper Contributor

@PerryPicker I do not think so in a short period of time as the Office JavaScript API does not have all features that you can programme with VBA. But coding JavaScript inside Excel opens a new world full of new challenges.

Iron Contributor

Great Feature but why i am unable to access the same via my Personal Microsoft Account ?

 

Is it only for work/business Microsoft Accounts ?

 

If so that will be very disappointing to hear....

@AshaKantaSharma , it's not deployed yet, only announced. At least I know no one who has this functionality, doesn't matter which account.

Microsoft

@AshaKantaSharma Office Scripts for Excel on the web is currently deployed, but not yet available to all tenants. We are gradually rolling out the feature to everyone with Office 365 E3 and E5 licenses over the course of several weeks.  As long as your admin has enabled the feature, you'll have access when it's available to your group.

Microsoft

@PerryPicker Office Scripts are providing an automation experience for Excel on the web, not replacing VBA macros. VBA remains the best solution for automating tasks in Excel for desktop. We hope to eventually grow the capabilities of the Office Scripts platform to match what VBA currently offers.

Steel Contributor

Excel sans frontiers...

Brass Contributor

Any idea if Office Scripts are going to eventually be provided to users without E3 / E5?

I'm looking to get my hands on learning the tech, but it's a pretty expensive ask for a 1 person shop.

Copper Contributor

@macrordinary You can practice with Script Lab, is free and can code JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The code used is the Office JavaScript API, you can get documentation from microsoft. You do not have to wait for Office Scripts to start learning

Copper Contributor

Any tips on getting the add-in to load? I enabled Office Scripts a day ago, have cleared cache, tried different browsers, etc. but both record and editor are coming up with errors.

 

2020-02-23_11-21-16.png

Microsoft

@Bjorn Foster Did you report that issue through the Help > Feedback button? That can help us resolve issues by providing us logs and other information to help provide contexts.

Copper Contributor

@AlexJerabek Sorry, I didn't think to report it. I tried again today and it finally loaded, maybe this was just a side effect of it being a recent deployment.

Steel Contributor

Thank you for sharing...

Copper Contributor

Hello,

I have the following Subscription.

gilmichael_0-1583502792348.png

 

It seems I could not see it from the Settings. I have the new admin center toggle on.

gilmichael_1-1583502882564.png

 

gilmichael_2-1583502897771.png

Also, from Add-ins, I could only see Scriptlab 

gilmichael_3-1583502941561.png

 

How is Office Scripts different from Scriptlab?

@gilmichael , as it is mentioned in the post, the feature is for E3 and E5 subscriptions.

Copper Contributor

@gilmichael 

You can get Script Lab from Excel 2013, it´s free.

With Script Lab you can code in TypeScript / JavaScript, HTML and CSS

Also create JS custom functions...

I use it and it´s amazing!!!

Copper Contributor

Hi @Sergei Baklan , could you enlighten me more about the E-n, subscriptions. Upon checking I believe I'm on E1. How does one become E3 or E5? Thanks!

@gilmichael , if you have purchased E3 or E5 ask you Global Admin to assign this license on you. If not, you shall purchase/upgrade subscription for your tenant.

Microsoft

@gilmichael Script Lab is an add-in that allows you to use the Office JavaScript APIs inside their hosts. It is meant to be a development tool for Office Add-ins. It is unrelated to Office Scripts. Many of the APIs are similar and both Script Lab and the Office Scripts Code Editor use a Monaco-based editor, but you should consider the two to be completely separate entities.

Copper Contributor

@Sergei Baklan you mention its only for E3/E5. Is there any way I can get it on my personal account. Work is being a bit slow at enabling it for me so I want to give it a crack at home and get ahead of the curve, but that's on my personal account (gmail) so no admin portal available.

 

Microsoft

@sam thompson, Office Scripts can't be enabled on a personal account right now. You can join the Microsoft 365 Developer Program and get access to an E5 tenant for testing. That way, you could try out Office Scripts before your work company enables them (and maybe use your experience to encourage them to turn the feature on at work).

Copper Contributor

Quiero hacer una programación en Script Lab de Excel y al descargarlo, me aparece la pestaña de la forma adecuada pero al tratar de usar cualquiera de sus funciones (Code, Ejecutar, Functions, Tutorial, Ayuda, entre otros), me sale un error que dice: "ERROR DEL COMPLEMENTO", (Se a producido un problema al intentar contactar con este complemento). Yo tengo un Office 365 con licencia de la universidad donde estudio, ya desinstalé el Script Lab y lo volví a instalar he incluso reinicié el pc pero no lo he logrado. Agradezco de antemano si me pueden orientar al respecto.

 

 

Copper Contributor

@AlexJerabek I appreciate your tip. I'm in the Dev Program right now and I can study and develop typescript add-Ins and following all the updates for now on... Thanks and I encourage other to do the same!

Brass Contributor

'Office' Scripts -- any plans to extend this out to the other Office applications, particularly Word?

 

Microsoft

@AlexC84, Expanding Office Scripts to other Office applications is something we definitely view as important, but there are no concrete plans at this time.

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‎Jan 09 2020 09:31 AM
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