Microsoft Excel Gets New Search Bar, Image Function, Formula Suggestion, More: Details

Microsoft has rolled out a bunch of new smart features for Excel. The features have been rolled out on Web, as well as for Windows and Mac users. The new features for Web users include Suggested Links, Image Function, Formula Suggestions, Formula by Example, and more. The Suggested Links feature will detect a broken external link to a Cloud workbook and suggest users a new location to fix them. The Image Function tool will let users resize cells, sort, and filter, and work with images within an Excel table.

According to a blog post by Microsoft, Formula Suggestions, and Formula by Example are being rolled to Excel web users along with Suggested links, Image function, and a new search bar in the queries pane. For Windows users, the Image function and a new keyboard shortcut is introduced that will let users open the Power Query editor, while Mac Excel users got the Image function tool only.

As detailed by Microsoft, the Suggested Links feature will detect a broken external link to a Cloud workbook and suggest users a new location to fix the broken link. The feature is currently available for production.

The Formula Suggestions feature will auto-suggest the best formula based on the user’s data. To access this feature, users will be required to type the ‘=’ in a cell or the formula bar. Currently, Excel can suggest SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX, MIN, and COUNTA formulas and it supports only the English language.

On the other hand, Formula by example will help make manual data entry easier by identifying the pattern and suggesting filling the entire column with a formula.

The Search bar feature will help Excel for Web users search and find their queries in the Queries search pane.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is reportedly working on the tabs feature for its Notepad app on Windows 11. The feature is currently in early internal testing and is expected to be rolled out in early 2023. A Microsoft employee accidentally dropped an image of the feature on Twitter, however, it was deleted later.