2020’s Newest Excel Features in Microsoft 365 to Power Your Work
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One of the value propositions of subscribing to Microsoft 365 is that you continue to get new features that can make a significant difference in your productivity. That’s one of the benefits that has made the software so popular with businesses.
As of February 2020, there were approximately 595,935 companies in the U.S. using Microsoft 365 for their business workflows.
There are so many features being added to the platform regularly, it’s easy for users to miss one and not even realize a tool like Excel can now make their work even easier to do and improve business processes.
We’ve reviewed all the Excel feature updates that Microsoft has rolled out so far in 2020 to bring you the lowdown on some nifty new tricks you can do in this popular spreadsheet application.
Have You Seen These New Excel Features?
XLOOKUP Function
The XLOOKUP function in Excel allows you to find values that are located in a spreadsheet range or table.
For example, if you have a spreadsheet of employee names and ID numbers, instead of having to scroll up and down to find specific ID’s, you can do an XLOOKUP instead.
What this will allow you to do is create two cells side-by-side. One will be where you would input the employee’s name, and the second would be filled in automatically by Excel with that person’s ID.
· In an open cell type: =XLOOKUP
· Select an empty cell where you’ll put the lookup value (i.e. where you’ll type the person’s name that you want to find the ID for)
· Type in a comma
· Select where to look up the value (i.e. select a series of cells in a column where employee names are listed)
· Type in a comma
· Select the data you want to see (i.e. select the cells containing the employee ID numbers)
· Press Enter
Now you can type in any employee’s name to automatically see their ID number (or any other data you like). Here’s a handy video about XLOOKUP from Microsoft.
Workbook Statistics
Get a quick bird’s eye view of your Excel workbook with a new feature option. Just click the Review tab in Excel and you’ll see Workbook Statistics in the Proofing area.
Clicking the feature pops up a window with details on both your current sheet and entire workbook like:
· End of sheet cell
· Number of cells with data
· Number of tables
· Number of formulas
More Images, Icons, Backgrounds, Templates
Around the same time that Office 365 was renamed to Microsoft 365, thousands of new design “goodies” were added to the Office programs.
When you use the Insert > Illustrations menu option in Excel, you’ll find many royalty-free stock photos, icons, and other design items to use. Templates have also been expanded. Microsoft said they added “thousands” more of these design items to the platform for users.
Ideas in Excel
Need some help deciding how to express your data or put it into a visualization? You can now get help from Excel using the new Ideas function.
Just highlight any data that you have in your spreadsheet and from the Home tab, click Ideas. A pane on the right-hand side will open offering several different ways that you can express that data and the ability to click to add a chart to your sheet.
You can also go a step farther and ask about your data, such as “What are the sales by region?”, and Excel will answer you with a chart if all the variables are there to create it.
This can be a huge shortcut when you’re creating various KPI analytics for your team to review.
Stocks & Geography Data Types
Pull in stock and geographical information without having to do a Google search. When you convert your data to one of these data types, it will automatically connect it to an online database to pull in information.
For example, say you are building a report on cities and need to look up things like population, average household income, etc. All you have to do is convert your city names to the Geography data type, and you can bring in all that information from the online database in a click.
· To convert to a datatype, just highlight the data you want to convert, like city or state names, then on the Data tab, click either Stocks or Geography.
· Then, highlight the data again and you’ll get a box at the top of your selection. Click that, and it opens a drop down of options based on the data type you selected (like population).
· Click to choose, and the data is populated in the next open right-hand column.
Are You Making the Most of Microsoft 365?
Microsoft 365 is so feature rich that often companies miss optimization opportunities. BrainStomp experts can help you uncover those features that can save you time and money in your daily operations.
Contact us today to schedule a technology consultation! Call 260-918-3548 or reach out online.
