Jon Wittwer
My feedback
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24 votes3 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Viewing / Navigating Workbooks · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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3 votes5 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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855 votes
Thanks for your feedback! We’re reviewing your suggestion. Please keep voting to influence our Backlog priority.
- Excel on web team
Jon Wittwer
commented
Google Sheets did it already. This feature shouldn't even require votes! It should be like this ... "Google Sheets can do it? Uh oh, we better get on it, and fast". I would recommend taking a look at the backlog and then look to see whether Google Sheets has already implemented something (like a date picker) and bump those features to the very top of the list. Google Sheets didn't do a very good job with their recent "Themes" feature ... so they aren't infallible, but they are improving very rapidly. It wouldn't surprise me if Google Sheets is looking at all of these Excel suggestions and just going ahead and implementing the ones that sound good.
Jon Wittwer
commented
This is a good suggestion. I frequently need to modify the way I design templates specifically because Excel online cannot show text oriented at 90 degrees. This is especially needed when you have a table with numerous narrow columns (such as a roles and responsibilities matrix and attendance roles and schedules with full dates in each column).
Jon Wittwer
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1 vote0 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formatting · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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2 votes0 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Editing · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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37 votes11 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Tables, Sorting and Filtering · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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The need for multiple total rows is one of the reasons that I often avoid using Excel Tables, so I definitely like the suggestion of allowing multiple total rows in tables. Right-clicking on the total row and selecting "Table > Insert Total Row" would be a nice way to do it.
Jon Wittwer
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3 votes2 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Other · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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6 votesJon Wittwer
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18 votes2 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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5 votes3 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Other · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
commented
See the following related suggestion:
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6 votes1 comment · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Macros and Add-ins · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
commented
Good idea ... see the following related suggestion:
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29 votes7 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
commented
A searchable or automatically filtered drop-down list would be a great feature for Excel to add!
One example would be a budget spreadsheet with a lot of budget categories. Autocomplete is nice, but it isn't sufficient.
Let's say you had the following list:
Mortgage Payment
Groceries
Auto Insurance
Personal SuppliesIn Google Sheets, if you type "P" then your drop-down list automatically shortens to:
Mortgage Payment
Personal SuppliesGoogle Sheets has not yet perfected this feature, in my opinion. Currently, Sheets only searches based on the beginning of the words, rather than a letter in the middle of a word. For example, if you type "y" you get no results even though "Mortgage Payment" contains a "y"
Although there are fancy tricks you can use to create a searchable list using dynamic ranges and the SEARCH function, these tricks require too much Excel expertise and are not a great solution for something simple like an account register.
Jon Wittwer
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1,244 votes986 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →
Hi all,
We have been working on this, and wanted to get your feedback on how you see this feature fitting into your workflow. We have a quick one question survey for you to give us your thoughts on the look and keyboard shortcuts we have at this time. Please see here for more: aka.ms/datePickerSurvey
Thanks!
Blake, Excel Product TeamJon Wittwer
commented
Over 40,000 users have found and installed the various date-picker add-ins for Excel, so if you were to count all of those users as having voted for this feature, that should more than justify adding this type of control (especially since most users are not aware of the add-ins).
Almost all of the most commonly used spreadsheet templates include entering or using dates in some way. Scheduling is one of the most common uses for spreadsheets, and that process almost always requires referencing a calendar in some way.
I don't know how many times I have had to modify the date format of a cell just to see what day of the week it is. When you double-click on a cell formatted as a date, the mini calendar / date picker should show up ... and just like that, you can see exactly what day of the week it is.
Not to belabor the point, but as a reminder, the date picker control has been a working feature in Google Sheets for quite a while.
Jon Wittwer
commented
FYI ... you can click on the Vote button if you like this suggestion. No need to add a comment that just says "yes"
Jon Wittwer
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Jon Wittwer
commented
A Date Picker in Excel is one of those features I think many of us have wanted for many years. I'd like to see something like in Google Sheets, where if a cell contains a date value and is formatted as a date (and does NOT contain a formula) and you double-click on the cell, a mini date-picker will pop up underneath or above.
I'm voting for this even though I created a mini date picker add-in in the Office Store. It would be MUCH better to have this be a built-in Excel feature.
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120 votes17 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formatting · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
commented
One more comment about the Google Sheets implementation ... I really like that you can change the color of the checkbox by simply changing the font color of the cell.
Jon Wittwer
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Google Sheets has beat Microsoft to this one! See below:
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/7684717
Google Sheets has made adding a checkbox to a cell as easy as going to Insert > Checkbox. The checkbox is actually a data validation option (so Insert > Checkbox is a shortcut). I really like that you can customize what values are used for the checkbox. The default is TRUE/FALSE, but via data validation you can change that to 1/0 or whatever.
Jon Wittwer
commented
I've been using a drop-down list with the Unicode checkmark symbols lately (✓, ✔) because Unicode characters appear within the drop-down list (as opposed to the wingdings approach). This works great for touch/mobile, but it still requires multiple touches/clicks to select the check from the drop-down. The down side is that the value isn't stored as TRUE/FALSE. You have to use an IF statement or something.
I would like to see a checkbox data validation option done the way it is in the Numbers app, where the value is displayed as a check (or better yet, give the user a way to change what symbol is displayed for TRUE and FALSE), and the value is stored as TRUE or FALSE.
Jon Wittwer
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3 votes6 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
commented
This is a good suggestion. A running balance that doesn't break when you delete rows is a very common use case. The method I use when I want to avoid using the volatile OFFSET function is to create a "relative named range" such as cell_above or cell_left or prev_balance.
1. Select cell C5
2. Go to Formulas > Define Name
3. In the Name field, enter "cell_above"
4. Set the Scope to the current Worksheet
5. Set the Refers field to =C4 (no dollar signs)
6. Use cell_above in a formula such as =cell_above+1 -
519 votes82 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formatting · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
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1,024 votes372 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →
Hi everyone,
Stock data types are now available to all Windows Office 365 subscribers with an English editing language installed (our data is only available in English at this time). You can find some instructions on how to use the feature here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/get-a-stock-quote-e5af3212-e024-4d4c-bea0-623cf07fbc54. The feature will also be appearing in Excel for Mac and Excel Online in early 2019 – as usual, Office Insiders will see the feature before the general population. See http://aka.ms/officeinsider for more info.One pro tip to locate instruments on a different exchange is to include an ISO country code alongside the symbol, for instance MX MSFT will tell Excel to grab Microsoft from the Mexican stock exchange instead of Nasdaq. We’ll be publishing more thorough documentation in the near future.
We also acknowledge that this is only half of the requested feature in this suggestion – the current stock prices piece. The ability to…
Jon Wittwer
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13 votes8 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formulas and Functions · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →Jon Wittwer
commented
I would love to see the SPLIT function added to Excel ... and it should be exactly compatible with the Google Sheets version.
To following formula returns the middle name:
=INDEX(SPLIT("J. Allen Smith"," "),2)Jon Wittwer
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286 votes55 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formatting · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →
Thanks for the suggestion Levi! We’ll be taking a look at this along with some other asks around conditional formatting. It’s a big help to see the things with the most votes, particularly within areas like formatting. So please keep the votes coming for things you want us to do sooner!
Thanks,
John [MS XL]Jon Wittwer
commented
Long formulas are very difficult to edit within the Rules Manager. So, either allow the formula field to be enlarged, or change the behavior of the left and right arrow keys, so that when you press left or right it scrolls the field rather than inserting a +Ref into the formula.
Jon Wittwer
commented
A "Duplicate Rule" button would be a VERY useful new feature for the Rules Manager. I've wasted quite a bit of my life on the the task of duplicating rules the hard way (going to Edit Rule to copy the formula, then creating a new rule, pasting the formula, then editing the format, editing the Applies to, and then re-editing the formula after realizing that all references changed because I didn't have the correct cell selected).
Jon Wittwer
commented
I'd like to see a "Consolidate Rules" button included in the Rules Manager that would automatically consolidate all identical rules.
That may be too difficult to implement if it isn't easy to determine whether rules are identical or not. So, I've added the following as a separate suggestion (Make "Paste and Merge Conditional Formatting" the default Paste behavior) for helping prevent the problem of having dozens or hundreds of split/fractured/duplicate rules.
Jon Wittwer
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Jon Wittwer
commented
Like Roland, the biggest issue I have with conditional formatting is that a lot of unnecessary separate rules are created when copying/pasting. For example, inserting a row and then copying formulas/formatting down is okay, but copying the row and inserting the copied row creates a redundant set of rules and splits the ranges in the original rule sets. This shouldn't happen, and it really needs to be fixed.
Another Issue: If you have a Table with a conditional formatting rule that depends on a different column, trying to move that column via cut/insert can crash Excel.
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773 votes213 comments · Excel for Windows (Desktop Application) » Formatting · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →
Thanks to Graham for starting this conversation. If you would also like Excel to maintain named range references and structured table references in the “applies to” field for Conditional Formatting rules, please add your comments and vote this one up. We will prioritize accordingly.
Thanks,
Steve (MS Excel)Jon Wittwer
commented
This is an excellent suggestion! If the other conditional formatting suggestion for avoiding splitting rules doesn't end up getting done, then using a named range in the Applies To field would provide the way to avoid causing duplicate rule sets when copy/pasting rows and columns.
Jon Wittwer
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I prefer the Automatic/Manual calculation option to be specific to the workbook, regardless of what other workbooks have been opened. People using my spreadsheets often email me to say their spreadsheet has stopped working, and the majority of the time it is because Excel has switched the calculation option to Manual.