Issue:
There are many times where my co-workers and I are required to work in the same spreadsheet simultaneously. The excel web application allows us to do this but does not contain the full functionality of excel that is required to do our work. Although Excel already has as shared spreadsheet option, each time a user wants to see updates, they have to save and hope the other person saved their updates as well.

Solution:
It would be great to use excel and collaborate in real time just as the web app does but within the excel platform on our computers with all the regular features we use such as macros, VBA, formatting and etc. This would greatly enhance productivity and our use with excel to be able to edit spreadsheets in real time with others with less limitations as the web app or the current excel sharing setup.

My idea is to create an own excel filefomat, which contain all spreadsheets and diagram etc. but only with cell values, not with formulas. Before saving, Excel will fill all cells with the actuall values. It's like selecting all sheets, copy, and paste only values.

If you send this file to other people, it doesn't matter if you use one, vba based, formula or formula which are excisting only in an add-in you use. It's like creating a pdf-file, but you've the full excel-support in your file and the files would be much smaller.

I work as an managing accountant in germany and work with some Excel Add-in like SAP BI or Infor Office Add-In. This add-Ins work with own formulas which are only available for people who als use this add-in. Sometimes I send this files before filling all cells with values and so the recipient only see "name#" in the file.

When protecting a worksheet, add option to allow users of the worksheet to add a row entry. Currently there are options to allow users of protected worksheets to edit entries and delete them but not to add new ones to the last row. EG: I have a worksheet which works out due dates based on last seen dates. The staff I work with are great but will type over the formula if left unprotected, this means I need to protect the worksheet on those columns. When I do this, the staff can add a line but the formula will not calculate as the protected worksheet does not have the option to add a new entry so those cells are locked against formulas. Therefore I am stuck as I can protect the cells but staff can't get the auto update, or I can unprotect it and staff will likely delete/override the formula by accident. As a note: I use the fill down method for the formula as it will never run out no matter how long the sheet is used or how many rows are deleted. It is not feasible to type the formula into the sheet and fill as needed then re protect.

It would be great if there was a way for 2 or 3 people to be in a workbook at the same time and see live changes whilst they're happening.

My colleagues and I work near enough solely on Excel and emails due to the line of work we are in. It is very annoying if someone goes in and inputs something and I put in something else or change whatever is already there and it gets over written because the other person saves it before you do or vice versa.

It would be great it this was an option for us to have.

thank you.

One of the very key use-cases of Excel across organizations is to create trackers and lists. In this use case, Excel is not used for any complex calculations, just basic Sum, and arithmetic operations to calculate how many items in the list and what % of items are open and what % are resolved etc.

Can Excel offer a separate mode for being used as a tracker, which reduces the calculation functionality, but replaces it with an ability to track changes to content, similar to what is allowed in Word.

I understand that implementing track changes in a spreadsheet that contains calculations is not possible as changes can be due to changes in constants or formulae and tracking each is not practical. But given the use case I've described above, if the user can classify a sheet or rows/columns as a tracker, the calculation functionality can be removed and replaced with a tracker mode which includes track changes.

Mail merge is a great feature, but for many applications, its not ideal. For example, I'll create a term sheet in Excel. Once the term sheet is approved, we'll type up the terms in our contract in word. I have used mail merge for this function, but its frustrating as i only need one output, and the formatting is cumbersome.
I'd like the ability the bring in data from excel or another form into word (and to a pdf) that is optimized for DATA, and to format the token shee so that its optimized for data, not a mailing, ie, that i can create the tokens based on a column, and not some absurdly long row!!!

I've attached merge sheet that i used for the purpose. It's not good.

thank you
jason