Microsoft Excel is an extremely powerful spreadsheet tool that has a variety of use-cases when it comes to data crunching. The software is available across multiple platforms and Microsoft updates it regularly with new features. Now, the company has published a summary of all the capabilities it added to Excel this month.
Starting off with Excel for the web, users can now configure sheet protection. This allows you to lock and unlock cell ranges in order to prevent unwanted changes. Furthermore, you can now customize which slicer affects which PivotTable on the web. Finally, you can also leverage semi-select to create workbook links based on cross-workbook formula selection.
Coming over to Excel for Windows, we have a couple of interesting features. The first allows you to insert data from images instead of manually typing it out, which could potentially save you a lot of time and unlock new use-cases too. However, it is only available on the Office Insiders Beta Channel. The second capability, generally available, enables Excel to automatically generate alternate text for charts if you"re using a screen reader and come across a visual which doesn"t have it. This is a major advancement in accessibility.
Finally, we also have two new features for Excel for Mac. The first is the same automatic alternate text generation described above. The second allows Mac users to import local files using Power Query and get a data preview ahead of performing transformations too.
If you have feedback on existing Excel capabilities or would like to see new features being added, file them to Microsoft on the dedicated Feedback portal here.