Excel for Windows (Desktop Application)
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To help us build the best version of Excel ever, we have partnered with UserVoice, a third-party service, to create this site to hear your suggestions and ideas for the next version of Excel. Your use of the portal and your submission is subject to the UserVoice Terms of Service & Privacy Policy, including the license terms. Please do not send any novel or patentable ideas, copyrighted materials, samples or demos for which you do not want to grant a license to Microsoft.
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Maintain copied data on the clipboard even if the "dancing ants" aren't shown around the copied range (Copy-paste clipboard persistence)
If I copy [ctrl-c] a cell, then type in another cell, then try pasting, no result. No paste. It would be nice if Excel would maintain the copied data on the clipboard even after the dancing ants no longer appeared, so that I could paste that data.
(2015-11-05 Dan [MS] - updated idea title and description to be clearer)
223 votesStarting with the Excel release available in June, Excel “Keeps” your copy longer. You can Copy your cells, and before you paste, you can still do other tasks like typing or inserting cells.
Based on customer feedback, the dotted “Marquee” stay active for much longer so that you can type, add formatting or many other things before the paste operation. We also made both the “Insert” and “Insert Copied Cells” commands available after the copy operation. Now, if you are copying data to another worksheet, only to realize you need more room, you can insert a variable number of cells and then paste without having to re-copy the original range!
If you want the Marquee to disappear, you can use the ENTER key to perform the paste operation, or after the paste, you can press the ESC key to cancel the copy.
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Recent Files pane in Excel 2013 was pretty good, but Excel 2016 broke it (Pin pinning recent files no longer sorts alphabetically)
In Excel 2013, you could pin recently opened files to the top of the list, and they would be sorted alphabetically. This way, you could easily get the same file by using keyboard shortcuts. For example, Alt-F-R-1 opened the first one on the list, alphabetically. The order stayed constant until you pinned or unpinned a file.
In Excel 2016, the files are listed chronologically, so Alt-F-R-1 opened the most recently used one. If you wanted to get a certain one, you have to wait to see where it is in the list. This is a TERRIBLE change. I keep opening…
221 votes= 2016-12-09 =
Hi all,The MRU should be sorting alphabetically again if you’re using build 16.0.7466.2038 or later. You can find your build number under File > Account.
Cheers,
Dan [MS]= 2016-09-22 =
Hello,I noticed a few reports of folks not seeing alphabetized MRUs anymore so I followed up with the Office team (it’s shared across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) that owns this.
Turns out that they rolled it out in July (and then we posted here that the work was completed) but then ran into some bugs and so disabled the feature on the MRU-service side.
That bug has been fixed, and they are planning to roll it out again in October.
Cheers,
Dan [MS]= 2016-07-11 =
Greetings,Good news on the recent files front – pinned files are now sorted alphabetically, as they were in previous versions of Office (and Excel).
To see…
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Remove the lock symbols from the tabs of protected sheets
Microsoft appears to have added this as a new 'feature' in Version 2006 (Build 13001.20266 Click-to-Run) and it's a disaster. For a workbook with a large number of protected sheets the visibility of sheet tabs is reduced by ~ 30%, thereby greatly reducing user-friendliness and the ability to navigate around the workbook using sheet tabs.
I've attached a screen grab of a basic model containing protected sheets which has lost visibility of at least 3 sheet tabs as a result of the unnecessary and unwanted lock symbols on almost every sheet.
This 'feature' needs to be removed or made optional…
199 votesHi All, We apologize for being slow to engage on this thread. We are listening to your feedback and we really do care. After reading the comments here as well as the feedback sent from within Excel, we have decided to remove the lock icon from Excel on Windows for the time-being. Since it’s not new to the other platforms (web, Mac and mobile) and we haven’t had similar feedback about it there, we won’t change those for now. We’ll consider how best to get consistency across the desktop, web, and mobile apps, and we’ll share updates if we have any additional next steps.
We appreciate all the suggestions for alternative ways of indicating that a sheet is protected, and will take them into account.
Thanks for all your feedback.
Steve [Microsoft Excel]
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Release XLOOKUP to the world!
Why only release to 15 percent of users?! Let the world have XLOOKUP and XMATCH now()!
193 votesXLOOKUP is now available to all users of modern Excel across all endpoints. We deployed XLOOKUP to the last group of users (Semi-Annual channel) in July 2020.
XLOOKUP will not be available in Excel 2019 and Excel 2016. These are point in time versions of Excel that predate the release of XLOOKUP.
[Joe McDaid – Excel PM]
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The Conditional Formatting Rules Manager badly needs the ability to be resized
The Conditional Formatting Rules Manager dialog box is far too small for modern display resolutions. It really should be a resizeable dialog, and should include the ability to resize column widths, so that the full length of complex conditional formatting expressions can be displayed and read without having to open them for editing.
189 votesWe’re happy to announce this improvement to the Conditional Formatting dialogs in Excel for Windows. If you’re a Microsoft 365 subscriber, they’re now resizable so you can see more rules at a time, and it’s easier to see the formula and range that the rules apply to. This includes the Conditional Formatting Rules Manager and New/Edit Rule dialogs.
Please see this for more information – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/resizable-conditional-formatting-dialogs/ba-p/2180229
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Scroll horizontally by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Wheel scroll, or with mice that support side scroll, like Adobe Reader, Chrome, IE...
Scroll horizontally by pressing Shift+Wheel scroll, or with mice that support side scroll, like in other aplications, like Adobe Reader, Chrome, IE...
181 votesGood news! On Windows, you can now scroll right and left using a mouse with a scroll wheel by holding down CTRL+SHIFT. If you move the scroll wheel up, it will scroll your sheet to the left, and scroll down to go right. On Mac, you can just hold the SHIFT key to do the same thing.
To see all the suggestions we’ve completed, please see https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/304921-excel-for-windows-desktop-application/filters/top?status_id=1406092
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let pen usage toggle between inking and pointer
The January 2016 Office update defaults the Surface Pen to an inking tool. Most Excel users prefer to use the pen as a pointer. Please give us a toggle in the ribbon to switch between inking and pointing.
155 votes(2016-03-15 – Completed) (Edit: Added link to Office Insider signup)
I wanted to let everyone know that in the update to Office that started rolling out to Insiders today, you will find a new preference in the Options dialog to allow you to make the pen select instead of ink by default. Enabling this preference will make the pen function exactly like it did before, plus you can use the options on the Draw tab if you do decide you want to ink. If you are an Office Insider (which anyone can join – https://products.office.com/en-us/office-insider), you should get this update within the next day or so. If you are not an Office Insider, it may take another week or two to reach you.
This is a per-app preference, so you can enable selection by default in Excel for instance while leaving ink as the default in Word and PowerPoint,…
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Bring back Edit Comments (Legacy) to the Right-Click Menu
The new Threaded Comments that appeared in Build 1809 are awesome for 99% of the people. But for the Commenting Gurus - anyone who has ever taken the time to build help systems by resizing, re-coloring, re-shaping and using Show All Comments, we are going to see our comments get destroyed by well-meaning co-workers.
Yes, all of the legacy icons are available for adding back to the Ribbon, but we the comment gurus can not trust our co-workers and managers to take the time to add these.
My request: If Excel detects any comment in the workbook that is a…
153 votesWe have addressed the topic of this suggestion by bringing back the legacy comments as notes and included the edit comment action as “edit note” in the right click menu. Also, this topic has multiple suggestions, so if for any remaining suggestions which are not covered by the update to reintroduce legacy comment editing, please open a new suggestion. Thank you.
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Options for AutoSave
The AutoSave function is a great idea!!
Just not in practice...
In my business we re-use the same invoices made in excel for the same jobs, however save them as a new file each time in order to keep a record of the previous invoice.
The new AutoSave feature is extremely dangerous in this regard.
If I, or someone else, does not remember to turn off AutoSave, or save as a new file BEFORE making new changes, we LOSE our previous invoice.Have options for AutoSave, the most important one being, DEFAULT OFF rather than default on.
151 votesThank you all for your feedback regarding the new AutoSave functionality in Excel.
We’ve been working to better enable collaboration and AutoSave is a key component that. While it can take some getting used to, AutoSave helps users feel confident that their work is being saved. This is especially evident when working with other people, but it also helps when you’re working by yourself.
We understand that you may need to turn off AutoSave for some workflows, so we are excited to announce that it is now possible to turn off AutoSave for a particular file as well as to change whether AutoSave is or or not by default.
For instructions on how to do this please see here: https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/what-is-autosave-6d6bd723-ebfd-4e40-b5f6-ae6e8088f7a5#OfficeVersion=Windows
This functionality is currently available to O365 subscribers.
We hope you continue to leave feedback on Excel to help us improve.
Thanks,
Pallavi Hukerikar
Excel Program Manager -
Add an If_NA optional sixth argument to XLOOKUP
The new XLOOKUP function introduced on August 28 2019 is awesome - exact match by default, the ability to return several columns at once, and search from bottom of data. But one thing would make it better - an optional sixth IfNA argument to provide an answer in case nothing is found.
One of the benefits of XLOOKUP is to eliminate the need to nest MATCH inside of INDEX. If you are trying to reduce the number of functions this would be a low-impact way of eliminating nesting XLOOKUP inside of IFNA.
For me, the main argument is that…108 votesThanks for the suggestions folks! We’ve added [if_not_found] as the 4th argument to XLOOKUP. The thinking is as follows:
It’s a reasonably common use case
The ISNA XLOOKUP approach cannot distinguish a “not found” from a #N/A returned from a valid match.
- Joe McDaid [Excel] -
make excel 2016 as stable as previous versions
Make Excel 2016 as stable as previous versions
We run complex spreadsheets with conditional formatting and links between spreadsheets and macros to drive behavior - this is both inherently slow (on various different computers) and unstable - crashes almost daily
Previous versions of Excel handled these same spreadsheets cleanly and easily !!!104 votesThank you all who voted! And we hear you loud and clear and we have been working hard at improving Excel 2016 stability on-going with every monthly release with our January monthly channel release at historically low levels based on our internal measures.
Moving forward, please send us feedback from within Excel, which includes actionable crash information we monitor regularly. Once Excel reboots from a crash please goto File → Feedback → Send a Frown, provide information on what Excel specific action you were doing when the crash occurred and press the “Submit” button.
thanx,
Prash [MSFT] -
Allow PowerQuery to Extract Data from PDF tables
Allow PowerQuery to import tables of data from PDF files.
99 votesHi all! I am happy to announce that recently we have released From PDF data connector in Excel which allows you to import and work with data from your PDF documents. Refer to this blog post for more information:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-data-import-from-pdf-documents/ba-p/1569202Guy Hunkin
- Excel Team -
Make Excel obey the "scroll inactive windows" setting in Windows 10
Make Excel obey the "scroll inactive windows" setting in Windows 10. Currently Excel will scroll when it is an inactive window, but it will not allow other windows to scroll when it is the active window. This makes transcribing data from a source that needs to be scrolled difficult.
96 votesThanx for creating and voting on this folks!
You should see this issue fixed starting with the latest Windows 10 Preview 17133.73 build update on 4/10 (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/03/27/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-17133-for-fast/) as well as latest Excel Monthly channel 1803 Build 9126.2152 update on 4/11 (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/mt465751.aspx).
Please let us know if you find this still not fixed with these builds (and later).
thanx,
Prash [MSFT] -
Improve the Concatenate Function
Make Concatenate to Work with Range of Cells / Arrays rather than 1 cell separated by Comas
=CONCATENATE(Array,Seperator)
The Array to Accept A1:A10 or A1:D1 or {"Abb","Areva","BHEL"} or {"ABB";"Areva";"BHEL}
or70 votesUpdate – 2016-03-07
Hi All,
Just wanted to let you know that we’ve completed adding new =CONCAT and =TEXTJOIN functions to Excel 2016 (as part of Office 365 – builds 16.0.6528 and later) that should do what’s been requested here. You can read more about it on our blog:
Cheers,
Dan [MS] -
Histogram, box plot, quantile plot, and other statistician-friendly features needed
I am regularly surprised when Excel can do complex operations using built in functions, but there is a lack of data visualization options out there. For example, a histogram, box plot, and quantile plot can provide options for visualizing and comparing data. I know these can be achieved using various add-ins (for example QI Macros), but those are never perfect and always seem hokey. Also would love to be able to do hypothesis tests (t-test, f-test, z-test, and so on) in user friendly and visual manner. Also, for all charts, please add a feature for using split column(s) to differentiate…
50 votesIn Office 2016, we released 6 new built in chart types: Treemap, Sunburst, Histogram, Pareto, Box & Whisker, and Waterfall. Checkout the following link for the top new features in Excel 2016. https://docs.com/ExcelDemos/7981/excel-2016-top-features.
However, there are several other feature requests wrapped up in this post. Please enter those as separate items so that we can respond to them individually.
Thanks,
Scott [MSFT] -
Power Query Advanced Editor and Formula Bar Intellisense
Add intellisense to the advanced editor and the formula bar for the Power Query M-Code.
48 votesA little bit late updating the status on this suggestion, but we’re happy to say that Power Query now has Intellisense when using the Advanced Editor and the query formula bar. If you don’t see it already, just go to File > Options and Settings > Query Options > Power Query Editor, and enable M Intellisense.
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Money in Excel: Multiple Accounts Per Institution
It's very common for a couple to both have accounts at one institution, but want to track data together. Unfortunately I can't use Money In Excel until this feature lands.
47 votesCircling back on this most upvoted feature, we’re excited to let you know that we just launched it due to your feedback!
- With Multi-Credential Support, you and your family members can connect multiple accounts from the same institution into Money in Excel. We hope this will make Money in Excel more useful for those who manage their finances together.
- To help you keep track of different accounts from the same institution, we’re also introducing Account Nicknames. In the Accounts tab in the Money in Excel pane, you can now customize your accounts with nicknames (You can even use emojis!)
If you do not see this update in your version of Money in Excel, try downloading a new version of the template here: Money in Excel Template. And don’t worry, your financial account data will not be lost! -
Error in the translation of the function description "PROCURAR" (MS Excel Pt-Br)
On the Brazilian Portuguese version of Microsoft Excel (desktop and online versions), the "PROCURAR" function has a translation error on its description.
The "PROCURAR" function description text uses the word "LOCALIZAR" instead of the word "PROCURAR", causing an error because "LOCALIZAR" is also another function.
The description states that "LOCALIZAR" is case sensitive. The "LOCALIZAR" function makes no distinction. The more adequate use on this case would be: "PROCURAR" is case sensitive.
41 votesThanks everyone! This function description was updated based on your feedback. [Carlos Otero – Excel Team]
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Please add MAXIF and MINIF
It would just be so useful to have this. Thanks!
40 votes2016-04-19
Hello all,
Just wanted to let you know that we’ve released MAXIFS and MINIFS to Excel as part of Office 365. If you’re a subscriber you should already have (or see soon) these functions in your arsenal.
Cheers,
Dan [MS]2015-11 ========
Hi there,Great news – we’re working on this! Actually, we’re working on MAXIFS and MINIFS – even better :-)
Cheers,
Dan [MS] -
38 votes
We’re happy to say that the UNIQUE function is available for O365 subscribers. Please see this article for more information – https://support.office.com/article/UNIQUE-function-c5ab87fd-30a3-4ce9-9d1a-40204fb85e1e
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