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Built-in Excel Interpolation Function

Anonymous
2022-08-02T19:28:48+00:00

Why doesn't excel have a built in interpolation function? It is a really common need in engineering. I've been using an add-in from XlXtrFun for more than a decade but that hasn't been supported since XP and only seems to work for 32-Bit. I have tried XONGrid instead. Last time I tried it, the newest version was buggy. I think the companies that provide this free-ware go out of business in a hurry. So why hasn't excel managed to add a simple interpolation routine of their own? I am aware that there are some work arounds like forecast or curve fitting. These are all really awkward. I mean its hard to beat something like

=Interpolate($A$1:$A$13,$B$1:$B$13,C1,FALSE,FALSE)

(XlXtrFun also could do 3D interpolation. You could do linear or parabolic interpolation. So there really was quite a lot of functionality. )

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-08-03T12:41:15+00:00

    Sure. I will describe it more. XON grid is available from sourceforge.net. I could not get XonGrid 4 to work and had to go back to XonGrid 3. I installed it on my laptop but somehow wound up with both the 32 and 64 bit version installed. The extra version generated an error message on start up, but I could never delete it. I went so far as to re-install Office, but still got a message about a file being in the wrong format when I open excel. That is a pretty innocuous error, but it was annoying. I got a more powerful desktop since I was working on very large worksheets. I installed XonGrid 3 with no issues and use it frequently.

    So I have very little beef with XonGrid. I just don't understand why excel doesn't have a built in function for something my colleagues use frequently.

    I will give an example of a common engineering usage. We have a table of material properties that vary with temperature. The temperature increments may not be equal. We would use Interpolate (from XlXtrfun) or Interp1d (from XonGrid) to provide the value at a specific temperature. This seems really common..

    Here are links to both, but the XlXtrFun website has not changed in years. Not sure if even XonGrid is really kept up.

    XonGrid Interpolation Add-in (sourceforge.net)

    Interpolate, Spline, and Curve Fit for Microsoft Excel - XlXtrFun.xll

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-08-03T21:43:45+00:00

    As to engineer usage, I may turn to python when no excel build-in function available.

    The pandas provide similar function.

    DataFrame.interpolate(method='linear', axis=0, limit=None, inplace=False, limit_direction=None, limit_area=None, downcast=None, **kwargs)

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  3. HansV 462.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-08-02T20:40:39+00:00

    You can submit a request from within Excel: File > Feedback > I have a suggestion.

    You can also add your vote to Adding a native interpolation function in Excel

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-08-02T21:29:15+00:00

    Bit. I have tried XONGrid instead. Last time I tried it, the newest version was buggy.

    How did you try?

    if possible, share the add-in file.

    maybe somebody can provide helpful suggestion.

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