WHAT'S NEW IN MICROSOFT EXCEL

It's 40 years old, but the venerable spreadsheet software just keeps getting smarter.

- Nik Rawlinson explores all the latest features

The world's best-known spreadsheet application turned 40 while we were writing this feature, having been first released in September 1985.

Back then, however, it was a Mac-only product, competing against the likes of Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCalc. Two years later, with Sylvester McCoy debuting on Doctor Who and "Never Gonna Give You Up" riding high in the charts, the first PC release came along, badged as version 2 to align it with the then-current Mac edition.

Today, Excel's old rivals are long forgotten. Much like Rick Astley's smash hit, Microsoft's spreadsheet has weathered the ages and even enjoyed a renaissance, despite competition from web-first rivals such as Google Sheets and Zoho Office.

As with Word last month (see issue 375, p44), one of the biggest changes has been to the way it's sold, with the Microsoft 365 service promising regular updates and enhancements, via a monthly or annual subscription most of which aren't included in the perpetual Office 2024 packages. Let's look at some of the best additions that have been rolled out to subscribers in the past few years, and that are coming in the near future.

Get help from Copilot

In today’s world it’s no surprise that the most fundamental updates to Excel are AI-driven, as with the major updates in Word we looked at last month. Arguably, the AI updates to Excel are even more significant, as they can completely change the way you interact with the software.

Perhaps the best exemplar of this is the new COPILOT function. This is currently in preview, and only available to users signed up to the Beta channel, but it provides an amazing vision of things to come. For the first time, rather than having to carefully collect your data and structure your calculations, Copilot lets you give the application broad instructions in plain English. For example, you might fire up Excel on your desktop, click in a cell and enter: