The Microsoft Office team today highlighted Transform Data By Example, a Microsoft Garage project for Excel which is aimed at making it easier to quickly find relevant transformation functions for a specific data transformation task. To use this new add-in, all you need to do is provide a few examples of the desired output, and Transform Data By Example will automatically return a ranked list of relevant data transformation functions.
According to the Office team, users can also customize and add their own data transformation code to the collection through an easy extensibility interface. This is because transform Data By Example continuously improves its quality by leveraging implicit user feedback. Here’s a bit more on the add-in.
Simply click one of the returned functions to see the results of applying that function on the data… The user only needs to provide a few output examples in the column next to the input and then click Get Transformations! Within a few seconds, Transform Data By Example finds relevant transformation functions from a large collection of functions it indexes, and then automatically uses these functions to compose and generate new code that can perform the exact transformation the user specified. All the heavy lifting happens under the cover and is transparent to users. There is no need to write code or leave the familiar Excel interface.
To get this Excel plug-in, you can visit this link. You also can let Microsoft know how the experience is going for you by leaving your feedback on the UserVoce forum.