The latest updates to Excel contain loads of enhancements including the ability to insert images as actual data values in cells.
Each month, Microsoft adds a slew of new capabilities to Excel, which makes sense considering that it is one of the most popular spreadsheet software, both for personal use and enterprise. Last month, Excel users netted features such as recommended formulas powered by contextualized insights, enhanced chart formatting options, Guided Reapply, and more. Now, Microsoft has revealed all the latest improvements that it introduced to Excel across various platforms in July 2023.
Starting with Excel for web, the sole enhancement is that you can change the color of individual data points in your charts using the Home Ribbon Controls. Microsoft says that this can be helpful to highlight particular trends and insights in your data, based on your own preference.
Coming over to Excel for Windows, a particularly useful feature for Current Channel users is the ability to share a section of an Excel workbook rather than the file in its entirety. This can be done by highlighting a range of cells with data or charts and then sharing only that particular section with others through a link. This ensures more security and privacy. Meanwhile, Monthly Enterprise Channel customers can efficiently copy and paste values from Excel’s status bar, something that was highly requested by users and rolled out to Insiders way back in March 2022.
Speaking of Insiders leveraging Excel for Windows, there are a couple of new features specifically for them too. Following popular demand, Insiders can now insert images directly in cells in such a way that they become the value of the cell and get associated with the data. This means that they can be filtered, sorted, utilized in formulas, and more. Additionally, Microsoft has also rolled out a new default theme for Office Insiders, containing various customizations to color palettes, line weights, and even a new default font.
Switching gears to Excel for Mac, users can select the “Auto Crop” functionality to crop inserted images such that only the most important portion is highlighted. This is not exclusive to Excel, but can also be leveraged in Word and PowerPoint. However, it’s only available for Office Insiders on Mac and iOS for now. Next up, we have the same couple of enhancements that have been rolled out to Windows, including insertion of images in cells as an actual value, along with the new default theme for Office. Like Windows, these Mac features are also available only to Insiders for now.
Finally, talking about enhancements to the Android version of Excel, something that will be highly appreciated by certain users is the ability to quickly transfer images from your Android phone to an Excel, PowerPoint, or Word file on Windows. This was previously a tedious exercise but can now be completed fairly quickly through a three-step process that efficiently transfer images over a wireless connection. That said, this is available only for Insiders right now. Lastly, the new default theme for Office Insiders is applicable to Excel on Android too.
As always, Microsoft has encouraged Excel users to provide feedback directly through the application or by voicing their thoughts via the dedicated feedback portal here.