In March, Microsoft introduced a really cool feature for its Excel app on Android: the ability to turn real pictures into real, editable data. The idea behind the feature was that you simply need to take a picture of a table (on a paper, or a whiteboard, etc.) crop the picture to fit just the table, and Excel will take the data from that table and bring that into an actual Excel spreadsheet. The feature is incredibly clever and really useful, so Microsoft is now bringing it to iPhones.

Three months after the feature launched first on Android devices, Microsoft today announced that the company is bringing the feature to iPhones. Microsoft Excel for iOS now lets you take a picture of a table, and turn it into a fully editable table within Excel.

Of course, the feature uses AI and image recognition to understand the data on the pictures you take, so the data is bound to be inaccurate or incomplete sometimes, and so Excel lets you “review” all the fields before actually putting it into a spreadsheet.

The feature is available for 21 languages, and you can get it today from the App Store. 

Tagged with Excel for iOS, Microsoft Excel