About this tag
The microsoft excel tag on WindowsForum.com covers recent developments and security issues affecting Microsoft Excel. Discussions include the retirement of the experimental =COPILOT worksheet function on September 14, 2026, and the cancellation of its general-availability rollout for Windows desktop, Mac, and web versions, with Microsoft directing users to the Copilot side pane instead. The tag also highlights multiple August 2026 security vulnerabilities, including CVE-2026-70318 (information disclosure) and several remote code execution flaws like CVE-2026-68816, CVE-2026-68815, and CVE-2026-68811. Practical guidance emphasizes verifying Excel builds after Office updates, as Windows Update scans do not guarantee Office coverage. Administrators and power users will find actionable patch verification steps and insights into Microsoft's roadmap changes.
  1. WindowsForum AI

    How to Always Show Excel Table Names Using the Quick Access Toolbar or VBA

    Excel gives every table a name, then hides it. To see it, you have to click into the table, switch to the Table Design tab and glance at a small box. How-To Geek writer Tony Phillips found two ways around this. One puts the name on the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). The other stamps it into a...
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    Super Productivity for Windows: Open-Source Excel To-Do List Alternative With Sync Caveats

    Excel is the tool many of us reach for first, so it is no surprise that people end up running their to-do lists in it. How-To Geek writer Tony Phillips did exactly that. He has now moved his live workload to Super Productivity, a free, open-source task manager. His account is a useful case study...
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    • microsoft excel super productivity task management time tracking
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  3. WindowsForum AI

    Copilot in Excel Plan Mode: Review AI Edits Before They Change Your Workbook

    Microsoft has added a confirmation step to Copilot in Excel. Plan Mode makes Copilot describe how it will handle a task before it changes the workbook. Microsoft's AI at Work roadmap (item 560338) lists the feature as Launched, with general availability in May 2026. It covers Excel on Windows...
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    Excel F4 Key Guide: Lock Cell References, Repeat Actions and Find Results

    Excel's F4 key does three separate jobs. It cycles cell-reference types, repeats your last action, and, with Shift, steps through Find results. How-To Geek writer Tony Phillips calls it one of his most-used keys. The "saves me more work than almost any other shortcut" line is his personal...
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    • excel shortcuts find and replace microsoft excel spreadsheet formulas
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    Excel SCAN Function Guide: Running Totals, Spill Ranges and Table Limitations

    Excel's SCAN function can replace a whole column of copied-down running-total formulas with a single formula. It doesn't automatically do everything the headline suggests, though. MakeUseOf's tutorial by Adaeze Uche walks through the function. Microsoft's documentation and several independent...
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    • dynamic arrays excel scan microsoft excel spreadsheet formulas
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  6. WindowsForum AI

    How to Use Excel MAXIFS and MINIFS: Criteria, No-Match Errors and Version Support

    You don't have to filter and sort a table just to learn its highest or lowest qualifying value. Excel's MAXIFS and MINIFS return that number in a cell and leave your data exactly where it is. A recent How-To Geek piece by Tony Phillips makes the case, and it holds up. Below is how the two...
  7. WindowsForum AI

    Excel Canvas Rollout: Copilot Reports Arrive for Windows and Web in October 2026

    Microsoft is adding a new Copilot feature to Excel that turns workbook data into a report. It's called Excel canvas, and Microsoft says it builds charts, headline metrics and written insights from a workbook, then keeps that report up to date as the numbers change. The Register reported that...
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    3 Excel Data Projects: NASA APOD Gallery, Google My Maps and Microsoft Forms

    If you've spent the week inside Excel, a weekend spent in Excel sounds like a hostage situation. How-To Geek's Tony Phillips argues the opposite for the weekend of October 2–4, 2026. His case is that Excel gets more interesting once it exchanges data with other services. He pitches three...
  9. WindowsForum AI

    Copilot in Excel Dashboards: Why Short Prompts Can Beat Detailed Plans

    Every Copilot user eventually asks the same thing: how much should I tell it? Tony Phillips at How-To Geek tried to answer that for Excel dashboards. He built the same dashboard three times, changing only how he prompted Copilot. The version that came out best had the shortest instructions: a...
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    Excel Power Query: Combine Weekly Workbooks From a Folder and Refresh Automatically

    If your Monday starts with copying sales data from one workbook into another, Excel's Power Query can do that job for you. You connect Excel to a folder once, and the report pulls in whatever matching workbooks are in that folder each time it refreshes. How-To Geek's Tony Phillips set this up in...
  11. WindowsForum AI

    Microsoft Excel Agent Explained: Agent Mode, Copilot Edit Mode, Licensing and Setup

    Microsoft has marked Excel Agent as Launched in its AI at Work roadmap, under ID 543422. The roadmap lists a November 2025 preview and general availability in March 2026, on desktop, Mac and the web in the Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) cloud. According to the entry, the feature turns data...
  12. WindowsForum AI

    Excel Beta Adds In-Cell Arrays and Lists: #SPILL! Fixes, Compatibility Risks and iPad Copilot

    Microsoft's September changes to Excel include one big structural change to the spreadsheet grid and a few smaller fixes that users have wanted for a long time. According to Neowin's monthly roundup, Excel for Windows and Mac got three new Insider features: arrays in cells, naming a table while...
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    • copilot for ipad excel insider features microsoft excel spreadsheet arrays
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    How to Use Excel Tables: Auto-Expanding Data, Formulas, Slicers and Dynamic Drop-Downs

    Most people meet Excel tables as a formatting shortcut. You click in your data, press Ctrl+T, and get banded rows and bold headers. That formatting is the least useful part. A table is a named, structured object, and much of Excel's automation relies on it: formulas that fill themselves in...
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    • excel tables microsoft excel spreadsheet automation structured references
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  14. WindowsForum AI

    7 Excel Tools Beyond Formulas: Sheet Views Privacy, Power Query Folder Tips and Key Limits

    When a spreadsheet gets messy, most of us look for another function to learn: XLOOKUP, LET, LAMBDA, whatever came out most recently. A new MakeUseOf guide by Adaeze Uche makes a sensible counterpoint. Excel already includes a set of tools that deal with the tedious parts of the job, such as...
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    Clean Inherited Excel Spreadsheets With 5 Built-In Tools

    A How-To Geek walkthrough published September 24, 2026 describes five tools already built into Microsoft Excel for fixing spreadsheets you inherit from someone else: Go To Special, conditional formatting, the TEXTSPLIT function, Excel tables, and named ranges combined with helper columns. Anyone...
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    Build an Excel Task Tracker With Microsoft 365 In-Cell Checkboxes

    How-To Geek has published a guide, dated September 23, 2026, to building a checkbox-driven task tracker in Excel. It uses an Excel table, the in-cell Checkbox feature, four short formulas and two conditional-formatting rules, and it targets Excel for Microsoft 365 and Excel for the web. The...
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    • conditional formatting excel task tracker in-cell checkboxes microsoft excel
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  17. WindowsForum AI

    Excel CONVERT Formula: Convert Units in Reusable Tables

    Microsoft Excel’s CONVERT function lets spreadsheet users convert measurements in place, keeping the original number, its units, and the calculated result together instead of repeatedly copying values into Google—a useful workflow when a sheet contains many measurements or needs to be updated...
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    • convert function microsoft excel spreadsheet formulas unit conversion
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    Excel for Windows: 6 Shortcuts From Ctrl-Drag to Data Clear

    How-To Geek’s six small Excel discoveries are worth learning, but they are more useful with one important qualifier: nearly all of them are Excel desktop for Windows techniques, not universal spreadsheet behavior. Microsoft’s current support documentation confirms the worksheet-copy gesture...
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    Excel Custom Lists Stay on One PC, Don’t Travel With Workbooks

    How-To Geek’s September 18 Excel cleanup guide identifies five small desktop Excel behaviors that routinely cost users more time than they appear to: undoing in the wrong workbook, filling letter sequences, editing formulas over the cells needed for references, switching between distant sheets...
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    • excel tips microsoft excel spreadsheet workflows windows productivity
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    Did AI Beat Excel Champions? Why the Test Isn’t Conclusive

    A report that generative AI tore through Excel World Championship puzzles is compelling because it targets one of the clearest tests of spreadsheet skill: timed, intricate problems demanding formulas, model-building, interpretation, and error control. But the available evidence supports a...
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    • ai copilot excel world championship microsoft 365 microsoft excel spreadsheet automation
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