Earlier this year, Excel for Android gained the ability to create a table by allowing you to take a photo of some data. The app uses OCR to recognise that and pop all the information into a spreadsheet. That feature has finally made its way into Excel for iOS.
Although the application of this feature is quite narrow, it can be very handy. For example, when I was a student, I’d often have access to paper journals and want to play with the data in articles, or reproduce them (with appropriate citations of course!) as references in my own assignments.
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2019/03/excel-for-android-lets-you-add-data-from-a-photo/” thumb=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2015/08/Excel-410×231.jpg” title=”Excel For Android Just Got An Amazing New Feature” excerpt=”Microsoft keeps adding new features to its mobile and cloud apps at a rapid rate. Now, if you’re using Excel for Android, you’ll be able to take a photo of a table and Excel will perform its own OCR, or should I say AI, magic and make it into a live, editable spreadsheet!”]
And there are plenty of times when we see data in presentations or receive documents when we’d like to grab data for later review.
This feature would have made that process far easier.
The range of data Excel can recognise and process includes financial spreadsheets, work schedules, task lists and timetables. If the data is in a table, Excel can handle it.
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2019/04/excels-new-insert-data-from-picture-tool-works-pretty-well-with-dungeons-dragons/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/qfgkigzwhoz4brwmuvfg.jpg” title=”Excel’s New ‘Insert Data From Picture’ Tool Works Pretty Well With Dungeons & Dragons” excerpt=”Microsoft is currently testing a fun new feature that allows you to import data into Excel by taking a picture of it — preferably a data table and not, say, your cat. That won’t do anything.”]
The new feature is available now through the App Store. Android users can access Excel for the Google Play Store.
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