In theory, this should allow users to take a picture of something that looks a bit like a grid or table, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence code will take the input and you’ll get a workable Excel spreadsheet of the data in the image. Think of it like OCR but for columns and rows. Here’s how Microsoft describes it in a blog post:
Open Excel on your phone or tablet and tap the Insert data from picture button to get started
Next, narrow in on your data until you see it surrounded by a red border, then tap the capture button. If needed, you can use the sizing handles around the edges of the image to crop it to size first.
Excel's powerful AI engine will process the image and convert it to a table. When it first imports your data, it will give you a chance to correct any issues it discovered during the conversion process.
On its own, not a stunning must heave feature. But it continues to promote a number of ideas that are key to Microsoft’s recalibrated mobile ambitions. This is not an easy task to accomplish. Scanning for a grid or outline can be done by many apps (including Microsoft’s own Office Lens) but taking the visual data and building up the sheet is the ‘simple magic’ that smartphone users love.
It wraps up this feature in the subscription based Office 365 package, which is turning out to be a key driver of revenue and customer engagement.
Finally, while this feature is still in beta for a limited number of Android users, you can be sure that when it gets a full release it will be cross-platform. That will allow Microsoft to continue emphasising that the platform is not necessarily the operating system, but the software you choose to run, software that will run on any device no matter the underlying OS.
