Excel, Teams, Power BI, Canva, Zoom, Google Sheets++: New tech features for Nov-Feb 2024

• Previous updates

My top 5

1. Visual calculations in Power BI
2. A new theme across Microsoft Office
3. Rearrange Excel rows/columns via drag & drop
4. Microsoft 365 Copilot is released to more users
5. Microsoft Forms responses update to a live Excel file

Core Office Apps

Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Word release regular updates to Microsoft 365 Apps and Services. To see or update your version, click File> Account. The Current Channel should now be on version 2402, which is the year 2024 and month 2 (February) with 2403 (March) coming later this month, the Monthly Enterprise channel should be on version 2401, the Semi-Annual Channel received an update to version 2308 in this period. The Insider or Beta features are only available for a small selection of people who sign up to help test features, so they haven’t been reported explicitly, but they give a good idea of what is coming next.

Excel, Word, PowerPoint & Outlook current channel

1. New Office theme: After 10 years, Office has changed its theme, the 3 major changes are:
1. New default font: The new Aptos font replaces Calibri (and lower case l and upper case I now differ)
2. New colour palette: A decision to help those with visual impartment
3. Thicker shape borders: The line weight is now 1.5 points by default, not 0.75

2. Upload mobile photo: Click Insert > Pictures > Mobile device. Android only currently.
3. Adjust PowerPoint teleprompter scroll speed: Click Slide show > Record, then toggle.

Semi-annual channel improvements (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook & Excel)

This video show as all the new features for the Semi-annual channel across Excel, PowerPoint, Word, OneNote and Outlook, the updates are written out below as well.

4. High contrast toggle on colour picker: In Word, PowerPoint and Outlook’s this blocks certain colours to aid with readability.

5. Assign tasks in comments in Word, Excel and PowerPoint: They will get an email plus an Outlook notification.
6. Spell check selected text in Word: Right click a section of text and choose “Editor”.
7. Track only your changes in Word: Click the Track changes drop down then choose Only me.
8. Ruler in Word: Draw > Ruler will ensure when you draw in a straight line.
9. Emoji react to an email: Add a like, love etc. to an email like on WhatsApp & other apps.
10. Notification pane in Outlook: Click the bell on the top right to see when there has been an email reaction, or an @ mention in an email or Word, Excel or PowerPoint comment.
11. Try the new Outlook: Outlook for Windows is getting an overhaul making it more similar to Outlook for Web, although Microsoft have said the transition will become mandatory later this year, you can now try it by toggling on the switch. My 2^nd most popular video of 2023 compares the new to the classic Outlook.

12. Accessibility improvements in PowerPoint: New buttons on the Accessibility tab to Inspect without colour, quickly add a table header row and mark a picture as decorative (so lack of alt text isn’t flagged).
13. Ink to shapes in OneNote: Toggle on automatic shapes on the Draw tab so drawing a circle like shape will be converted to an actual circle etc.
14. Switch to vertical tabs: View > Tabs layout allows you to toggle between horizontal and vertical tabs for sections
15. Insert picture from webcam: Click Insert > Pictures > From Camera

Excel

Excel publishes a digest every month which I am a guest contributor to, here are articles for January and February 2024.

Excel Desktop Semi-annual channel

16. External links improved: Click Data tab > “Workbook links” to get a better experience than the superseded “Edit links”.
17. Pasting across workbooks takes less unintentional objects: e.g. Paste a cell with a named range or cells formatted with data validation list from another sheet will paste values only (rather than an embedded link that is hard to find). This video showcases these two aspects:

18. Stop removing leading 0s: Phone numbers like 092-716-277 break on Excel. Now you can disable the unwelcome change under File > Options > Data. Other auto conversions can be disabled too (such as changing 6APR to a date or 87298738137182873 to 8.73E+16).

19. Show changes at cell level: Backtrack through the history of each cell. Values, formulas and certain formatting (merging, inserting etc.). Right clicking a cell, a range or a worksheet or go to the Review Tab to see.

20. Ctrl Shift V to paste Values only.
21. Create query from Dynamic Array: The output of a formula that returns multiple rows and columns can be used as a source for Power Query e.g. =FILTER or =UNIQUE.
22. Images inside cells: =IMAGE(url, [Alt text], [Size], [Height], [Width]), will show the relevant image, only the first input is required. Refer to images via a LOOKUP, a pivot tables or more, but unavailable for charts & slicers. Add Alt text so that shows up in filters in your tables. The Current channel also allows you to insert images inside cells stored on your computer.
23. Record Office Scripts: As VBA doesn’t transfer well to Excel online or Excel for Mac, Microsoft launched Office Scripts. Click Automate > Record to launch a sidebar showcasing your steps. For now, there is no relative referencing and many actions are unsupported. This video compares the macro recorder to the office scripts recorder.

Excel Online only

24. Rearrange rows/columns via drag & drop: There is additional space above col letters and left of row numbers for drag and drop to rearrange or replace.

Microsoft 365 Copilot for medium businesses and Copilot Pro for individuals

25. Individuals with M365 personal or family subscriptions can purchase this a cheaper “Copilot Pro” license for $20 per month, which has Copilot in Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, whilst Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an add on for any Business Standard, Business Premium, E3 or E5 licenses for $30/£25 per user per month, this adds Copilot to the sam apps plus Teams, Outlook and other M365 apps. I wrote this blog recently showcasing copilot features or how to get to similar results with other free/cheaper apps.

Microsoft Teams

26. Forward a message in a Teams’ chat
27. Generate AI video backgrounds for calls: Available for Teams Premium only
28. Auto see up to 9 video screens by default in Chrome/Edge
29. Insert Loop components in Teams channels: Previously only in Teams chats
30. Improved search experience In channels and chat
31. New shortcuts: Alt Shift A to audio call, Alt Shift V to video call

Other Microsoft 365

32. OneDrive offline mode: view, sort, rename, move, copy, and delete files via a web browser
33. Stream: Add a survey, poll, quiz (made via Microsoft Forms) to a video at specific times, you can also add a callout.
34. Bulk migrate Google Forms to Microsoft Forms: instructions are here
35. Forms app in Windows Store: Add an app to use Forms without a web browser

Forms results live sync to Excel: Previously you had to download results of Forms results at that time but now if you navigate to “responses”, you can click “Open results in Excel” to get a live linked file, you can also optionally download results.

Google Workspace

36. Import Excel’s sensitivity labels: Convert or import sensitive Excel files (which use sensitivity labels) into Google Sheets with client-side encryption.
37. Video feed in the slides: Access the "Speaker spotlight” button via the main toolbar to add a webcam placeholder feed for online presentations. Add to one/many slides and even change the shape or position slide by slide, the equivalent PowerPoint feature is called Cameo.
38. Comments in Slides, Docs & Sheets: Sort, filter, hide, expand and minimize via View menu > Comments.
39. Drag & drop an Image to replace the background in Slides.
40. Mark up Google docs on a mob device with pens & inking.
41. Get to Pageless format more intuitively: In Docs, click Format > Switch.
42. New filtering options for connected sheets in Sheets.
43. Pin chat messages in Google meet.
44. Gmail: New unsubscribe button on the email without opening it.
45. Toggle list view/grid view of files easily in Google Drive.
46. Filter by people in Google Drive: Find things easier if you know someone has access to the file.
47. Drive: Share time link with a video, e.g. start watching this video from 2:07
48. Better E-signatures: Set up a template using Docs to request signatures or details in certain places & in Drive you can sign in officially. Available for Workspace only
49. Smart compose allows maths equations: 97+52= & then the answer will show in Docs, Slides, Sheets and Drawings. Workspace only.
50. Pronounce your name when setting up your details and then others will be able to play back the audio clip of your name across Google products. Workspace only.
51. Edit who inside your organisation can respond to Forms: Specify certain users or groups to be able to respond to the Form only.
52. Google Gemini: Google’s version to Copilot has launched a business add on package, more details here.

Power BI

53. Bar & column chart overlap: Overlapping spacing between series and borders, more here.
54. Reference labels enhancements: Options for accent bars, background colour, positioning, transparency and layouts.
55. New card enhancements: Rounded corners and pagination for multi-cards.
56. Add ribbons to bar charts: The ribbon chart which used to be a distinct chart is now integrated into bar and column charts
57. Generate measure descriptions with AI: Copilot can write out measure descriptions, which is usually useful but tedious. Here are more details about enabling Copilot for Fabric.
58. Visual calculations: One of DAX’s biggest frustrations compared to Excel is being unable to refer to a cell, so simple calculations like “change from prior row” or “cumulative totals” become incredibly difficult. With this new feature you must click “Visual calculations” on the Home tab, then a formula editor Running sum, previous/next/first/last, MOVINGAVERAGE, PERCENTOFPARENT.

Zoom

59. Move participants automatically to the waiting room: If the host leaves they are moved and Zoom automatically moves participants back if the host returns.
60. Request host to start cloud recording by any user.

Canva

61. Sketch to life: This new AI image generator app allows you to draw and type a description to generate images
62. AI image generation enhancement: When the Magic Media image generator gets you what you want mostly, you can right click a preferred image and say "Generate more like this"
63. Enhancer app: This app uses AI to enhance blurry photos
64. Blur brush: Granular control over which parts of photos get blurred can be accessed via Edit Photo > Blur > Brush.

That wraps up the updates until February 2024, come back for more new features in June.