You Can Now Turn Pictures Of Spreadsheets Into Editable Tables In Excel

After rolling out this new feature for Android devices, Microsoft is bringing the enhancement to iOS. Now, Excel users can take a picture of printed tables or spreadsheets and import them to the app. In Excel, these data are totally editable like the ones you create directly from the system. You can take pictures with your phone and then edit using Mac or Window.

Microsoft is able to do this by combining artificial intelligence, optical character recognition (OCR), and machine learning models to be able to turn a data on a real piece of paper into a digitally editable table.

More importantly, the image recognition technology can tell different types of data apart, from work schedules, timetables, task lists to financial spreadsheets. So far, it is one of the most impressive features we have ever seen in Excel. Microsoft has made use of Seeing AI, Office Lens app, and Word’s Reflow feature to make it possible.

If you do not know what Seeing AI is, here is a brief definition. It is an app for smartphones that can tell users who are visually impaired how the world around looks like by using computer vision. They can point the camera to a person, and the app will talk about their feelings or their identity. If the camera captures merchandise, it will tell users what that is.

The improvement is now in use on Excel for iOS in 21 nations. You can get it on Google Play Store if you are using Android and Apple’s App Store if you have iOS.

Apart from this feature, Microsoft also gives its Authenticator app Microsoft Account security alerts. These alerts can work on Outlook and some other personal accounts. They will notify you whenever a security-related issue arises, like when your password changes. It has already been rolled out for both Android and iOS users.