Cell Block HTML: Towards Spreadsheet-based Text-Mining for the Masses

Abstract

This article details a technical advancement in the core ability of spreadsheets to be able to natively handle forms of rich text, such as HTML. We establish the context to the work, and specify the criteria we needed to meet so that the expansion of spreadsheet computation to handle sophisticated forms of text analysis-comparable to that of numeric calculation-remained within the purview of regular users. Implementation details are provided, along with an example illustrating the application of a LDA-based text-mining technique to perform topic modeling.