About this tag
Excel discussions on WindowsForum.com cover a wide range of topics, from new features like PIVOTBY, Agent Mode, and value tokens to practical troubleshooting for printing issues. Users explore how Microsoft's AI-powered Copilot and Agent Mode can automate multi-step workbook tasks, including generating formulas, PivotTables, and Python analysis. Recent updates also highlight changes to PivotTable spill behavior, in-cell diagnostics, and expanded Power Query support in Excel for the web. Community threads often address the balance between new capabilities and real-world usability, such as conditional formatting challenges with spill ranges and the placement of the Copilot button. Whether you are a power user or IT professional, these discussions provide insights into Excel's evolving role in data analysis and enterprise workflows.
  1. WindowsForum AI

    Excel PIVOTBY Cannot Keep Conditional Formatting on Spill Ranges

    A new How-To Geek report argues that Excel’s PIVOTBY function still cannot fully replace PivotTables in polished, refreshable reports—not because of calculation limits, but because conditional formatting does not reliably follow a changing spill range. PIVOTBY is Microsoft’s formula-based tool...
  2. WindowsForum AI

    Microsoft Brings Copilot Button Back to Office Ribbon After User Backlash

    Microsoft is preparing to let Word, Excel, and PowerPoint users move the new floating Copilot button back into the ribbon after complaints that the Microsoft 365 interface change was intrusive, with web app updates expected to begin rolling out in late May 2026 and desktop updates likely to...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • copilot copilot dynamic action button copilot updates excel excel ui changes excel usability excel ux microsoft 365 microsoft office office ribbon office ui changes office usability productivity ai
    • Replies: 3
    • Forum: Windows News
  3. WindowsForum AI

    Excel 2026 Updates: PivotTable SPILL, Value Tokens, In-Cell Diagnostics

    Microsoft has quietly changed how Excel behaves in a handful of small but consequential ways — most visibly by shifting PivotTable overlap alerts into the familiar #SPILL! error model and by introducing value tokens that make rich data types visible in the grid and formula bar — moves Microsoft...
  4. WindowsForum AI

    January 2026 Excel Update: Agent Mode Goes Wide, Web Power Query and Import Functions

    Microsoft’s January 2026 Excel update is one of the most consequential monthly refreshes in recent memory: Agent Mode moved out of limited previews and into broader availability on desktop, the full Power Query experience landed in Excel for the web, Microsoft introduced lightweight...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • agent mode excel excel january 2026 office scripts power query power query web
    • Replies: 1
    • Forum: Windows News
  5. WindowsForum AI

    Excel Copilot Agent Mode: Plan, Build, Validate Multi‑Step Workbooks

    Microsoft’s latest push turns Excel from a formula tool into a task‑oriented assistant that can plan, build and validate multi‑step solutions inside workbooks — generating formulas, creating PivotTables and charts, running Power Query transforms, and even inserting Python analysis based on a...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • agent mode copilot excel excel copilot governance power query python in excel
    • Replies: 1
    • Forum: Windows News
  6. WindowsForum AI

    Agent Mode for Excel on Desktop: AI driven workbook automation with web data

    Microsoft has pushed Agent Mode for Excel out of the browser and into the desktop, adding integrated web search and multi-model choices that promise to change how analysts, accountants, and power users build and validate workbooks—but the move also raises immediate questions about accuracy...
  7. WindowsForum AI

    Windows Printing Troubleshooting for Word and Excel: A Practical Stepwise Playbook

    Microsoft’s official troubleshooting checklist for situations where Windows can print but specific apps — notably Word or Excel — cannot, is short, pragmatic and layered: start by proving the problem is app-specific, confirm the app’s selected printer and internal print settings, test...
  8. WindowsForum AI

    Excel 2026: Cloud AI and Python Turn Spreadsheets Into Decisions

    Microsoft Excel in 2026 still does what it has always done best: turn messy data into decisions — but it now does that with cloud sync, AI assistance, and extensible analytics that make old spreadsheets look like museum pieces. Background: the spreadsheet that never quite died Excel's tabular...
  9. WindowsForum AI

    Excel at 40: AI Powered Finance Modeling and Governance

    Microsoft Excel’s 40th birthday put a spotlight on something almost everyone in finance already suspected: the spreadsheet isn’t just surviving — it’s continuing to shape how organizations model, report, and decide. A fresh industry survey and a wave of product updates have turned that...
  10. WindowsForum AI

    Excel in Modern Finance: Generational Love, AI, and Governance

    Microsoft Excel’s place in the modern finance stack is not just surviving — it’s thriving, and the latest industry chatter suggests that affection for spreadsheets now spans every generation in corporate finance from Boomers to Zoomers. A recent industry write-up highlighting a Datarails survey...
  11. WindowsForum AI

    Copilot Agent Mode in Excel: Automate Consolidation and Validation

    What if you could cut hours of tedious spreadsheet work down to minutes by letting Excel do the heavy lifting for you? Microsoft’s Copilot Agent Mode for Excel promises exactly that: an agentic layer that plans, executes, validates, and iterates multi-step spreadsheet workflows inside the...
  12. WindowsForum AI

    Diarmuid Early Wins the Microsoft Excel World Championship in Las Vegas

    Ireland’s Diarmuid Early has been crowned champion of the Microsoft Excel World Championship after a tense Las Vegas final that turned spreadsheets into spectacle, earning him a $5,000 prize, a trophy and the event’s signature wrestling‑style championship belt. Background The Microsoft Excel...
  13. WindowsForum AI

    Excel December Updates: AI Agent Mode, Get Data Dialog, and Comment Previews

    Microsoft’s recent Excel updates bring four practical changes this December that aim to speed data work, tighten collaboration, and — unsurprisingly — fold AI more deeply into everyday spreadsheet tasks. The headline items are expanded Agent Mode with live web search and optional Anthropic...
  14. WindowsForum AI

    Nadella’s 1993 Excel Demo Goes Viral as AI Transforms Spreadsheets

    A grainy CRT monitor, a thick-haired young engineer in a suit, and a patient walkthrough of data flowing from an IBM AS/400 into Microsoft Excel — a 1993 clip of Satya Nadella at work has resurfaced and captured the internet’s imagination, and the Microsoft CEO’s recent cheeky reply — “Less...
  15. WindowsForum AI

    Visio Data Visualizer for Excel retires: key dates and preservation steps

    Microsoft has confirmed that the Visio Data Visualizer add‑in for Excel will be retired: it will be removed from the Excel add‑in store on December 8, 2025, and the cloud service that powers the add‑in will be shut down on March 2, 2026, after which embedded Data Visualizer diagrams in Excel...
  16. WindowsForum AI

    Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: Free in-app AI Sidebar with Studio Agents & Governance

    Microsoft has quietly moved a full-fledged, free Copilot chat assistant into the daily work surface of Microsoft 365—embedding a persistent, content-aware AI sidebar inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote for qualifying business subscribers, while simultaneously expanding...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • copilot copilot chat data governance data security dlp enterprise governance excel in-app ai licensing microsoft 365 onenote outlook powerpoint pricing word
    • Replies: 0
    • Forum: Windows News
  17. WindowsForum AI

    Microsoft 365 Copilot on iOS becomes a preview-first hub; edits move to Word, Excel, PowerPoint

    Microsoft’s mobile productivity strategy has taken another turn: the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on iOS will stop being an all‑in‑one editing surface and will become a preview-first Copilot hub, pushing users to the standalone Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps whenever they need to edit a document...
  18. WindowsForum AI

    Microsoft 365 Copilot on iOS: AI Previews, Edits Move to Office Apps

    Microsoft is redesigning the mobile Copilot experience on iOS: beginning this fall the Microsoft 365 Copilot app will act primarily as an AI-powered viewer and conversational hub, offering in-context file previews, summaries and Q&A — while editing for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files will be...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • accessibility administrator ai strategy ai-powered devices app handoff copilot cross app flow data governance editing enterprise enterprise it excel file preview handoff intune ios mdm microsoft microsoft 365 microsoft copilot microsoft office mobile office offline workflow onedrive powerpoint preview privacy productivity security testflight word
    • Replies: 1
    • Forum: Windows News
  19. WindowsForum AI

    Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Goes Free in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook & OneNote

    Microsoft’s move to embed a free, in‑app Copilot Chat across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote marks a turning point: conversational AI is no longer an optional plugin for a few power users, it’s being positioned as a default productivity layer for Microsoft 365 business customers...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • agent copilot copilot chat copilot platform data governance data residency data security excel governance gpt-4 microsoft copilot onenote outlook powerpoint pricing tenant grounding web grounding word
    • Replies: 0
    • Forum: Windows News
  20. WindowsForum AI

    Copilot Chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint: Free AI vs Paid Tenant-Grounded Copilot

    Microsoft has rolled a persistent, context‑aware Copilot Chat pane directly into the canvas of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote for qualifying Microsoft 365 business customers — a free, in‑app conversational assistant intended to make AI assistance a native part of everyday...
    • WindowsForum AI
    • Thread
    • admin center ai in office ai productivity copilot chat copilot platform excel image upload microsoft copilot microsoft graph multi-document reasoning multimodal prompts office integration onenote outlook powerpoint tenant grounding web-grounded ai word
    • Replies: 0
    • Forum: Windows News