Excel will get ‘smart’ autocomplete in the web version of Microsoft 365
Using formulas will become much easier
Microsoft has added some handy automation features to the web version of Excel (which comes with Microsoft 365, formerly known as Office 365), its spreadsheet software. New formula suggestions and formula by example will help automate some actions that previously had to be performed manually.
Formula suggestions: If you type an “=” sign in a cell, Excel for the web will suggest the type of formula you should use based on the data around it. For example, in a document with the full quarterly sales volume in the column marked “total”, Excel will offer to sum the cell ranges.
According to a Microsoft blog post, the feature currently only works in English and will offer the following formulas:
- SUM is a function of summing up values;
- AVERAGE is a function that calculates the arithmetic average of the values in the list of arguments;
- COUNT is a function that counts the number of cells with numbers, as well as the number of numbers within the list of arguments;
- COUNTA is a function that calculates the number of filled cells in a range;
- MIN is a function that returns the smallest number in a set of values;
- MAX is a function that returns the largest number in a set of values.
Microsoft’s blog post also announces several other features, including ‘suggested links’ (a feature that will automatically fix a broken link to work documents stored in the cloud), a feature to add an image with alt text (available for Windows, Mac, and web versions) , the company is also adding nested Power Query data types and the ability to retrieve data from dynamic arrays for Windows users (Insider).
