Near the end of each month, Microsoft publishes a changelog of all the new features it added to Excel and Teams in the four weeks prior. The firm already released a list of capabilities it added to Teams in January 2023 yesterday, and today, it has done the same for Excel.
Starting with Excel for the web, we have a single feature but one that"s been highly requested by customers. It is the ability to view the source data for a value cell in a PivotTable. This is especially useful if you spot a seemingly anomalous value in a PivotTable and want to investigate the underlying data further. Now you can do so by double-clicking the cell or right-clicking it and pressing "Show Details". This will open a new sheet with more details about the cell so you can validate the numbers and the calculations.
Coming over to Excel for Windows and Excel for the Mac, we have an identical changelog for both. Office Scripts can now be automated through Power Automate by leveraging a dedicated "Automate" tab. This is something we already covered in detail a few weeks ago.
Meanwhile, for Insiders, there are two new functionalities on Windows and Mac. The first makes automation even easier. Rather than writing Office Scripts through JavaScript or TypeScript, you can simply use the "Record Actions" functionality, which does exactly what it says on the tin. You can navigate and perform actions in the UI yourself and the script to mimic your activities will automatically be generated on the backend. The other Insider feature is relatively minor and offers a tooltip to validate your parameters in an Excel formula.
While the changelog certainly isn"t as extensive this time around, there are certainly some productivity enhancements that will likely be appreciated by those looking to automate monotonous workbook activities.