Getting started with text analysis in Python

So, apparently using MS Excel for text data is a thing, because there are add-ons you can install that create word counts and word clouds and can apparently even perform sentiment analysis. However, I honestly do not know why someone would do that if free and less awkward tools exist -- like Python. I have outlined in a previous article, that many people are reluctant to pick up coding because they believe that it is difficult and in-depth math knowledge is required. If you can write long and awkward functions in Excel, let me reassure you that Python is way easier and more intuitive. Besides, there exist various Python libraries for natural language processing (NLP) with a huge plethora of in-built functions that will do the heavy lifting for you.