What’s New in Excel (August 2024)

Welcome to the August 2024 update. This month, use Copilot in Excel to create custom charts and pivot tables, and summarize text data within your workbooks. Also, the new Regex mode for XLOOPUP and XMATCH is now available to beta users on Windows and Mac, allowing you to leverage Regex within existing functions.

Excel for Windows, Mac, and web:
– Copilot in Excel: Create custom charts and pivot tables

– Copilot in Excel: Text Insights

– Dynamic watermarking (Insider)

Excel for Windows and Mac:
– New regex mode for XLOOKUP and XMATCH (Insider)

Excel for Windows:

– Comment filtering #FIA

Excel for Windows, Mac, and the web

Copilot in Excel: Create Custom Charts and PivotTables

Copilot can now create PivotCharts and PivotTables according to your specifications. Tell Copilot what type of chart you want and configure the axes, titles, labels, etc. Or you can specify the configuration for the PivotTable you want to create.

Currently supported chart types are: line chart, pie chart, clustered bar chart, stacked bar chart, 100% stacked bar chart, clustered bar chart, stacked bar chart, 100% stacked bar chart, donut chart, area chart, 100% stacked area chart, histogram, and scatter chart.

Creating a Custom Pivot Chart Example:
Create custom charts using Copilot in Excel
Creating a Custom PivotTable Example:
Create a custom pivot table using Copilot in Excel

Copilot in Excel: Text Insights
Summarize text data like survey results, reviews, and comments with Copilot in Excel. The tone, length, and content of your summaries can all be controlled through prompts.
Gain valuable insights from text using Copilot in Excel

Dynamic Watermarking (Insiders)
Sensitivity labels in Microsoft Purview Information Protection provide a highly effective way to restrict access to sensitive files and prevent people from doing inappropriate things like printing documents, while still allowing full collaboration. Watermarking protects against screenshots and legacy technologies that may not provide this kind of security coverage. Read more >
Dynamic watermarking in Excel

Excel for Windows and Mac

New Regex Mode for XLOOKUP and XMATCH (Insider)

You can now leverage regular expressions within your existing XLOOKUP and XMATCH functions using the new XLOOKUP and XMATCH functions. [match_mode] = 3 and use a regular expression pattern with lookup_value. This allows XLOOKUP and XMATCH to match part of the text in a cell or other text patterns that can be described by regular expressions. This feature is rolling out to Beta Channel users. Read more >

New regex mode for XLOOKUP
Excel for Windows

Comment Filtering
You can now filter for active, resolved, or @mentioned comments to find the comments you’re looking for. When you filter for a specific set of comments, the comment indicators you see in your worksheet will update to help you focus on the comments that matter in the context of your work. This feature is already available on Mac and web and is now rolling out to all Windows users.
Filters active comments, resolved comments, or @mentioned comments.

Many of these features are the result of your feedback. Thank you! Your continued support Putting Feedback into Practice (#FIA) Helps improve everyone’s Excel skills. Let us know if you like a particular feature or if there’s something you think could be improved.“Please give me a compliment” or “Please give me a suggestion”.. You can also submit new ideas or vote on other ideas by: Microsoft Feedback.

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Special thanks to Excel MVPs: David Benaim,Bill Zelen and Alan Murray Thank you for contributing to this month’s What’s New in Excel article. David is writing weekly YouTube video And regular LinkedIn Posts Learn about the latest innovations in Excel and more. Bill is the founder and host. Mr. Excel.com And the author of several books on Excel. Alan is an Excel trainer, author, speaker, and is best known for his blog. Computergaga.com and YouTube ChannelWith the same name.