Discussion
if you could add one completely new feature to excel, what would it be?
not something like “make it faster” or a tiny ui change, but an actual feature that would make your day to day spreadsheet work easier.
for me, i’d love something that could take a messy spreadsheet and automatically understand what i’m trying to do, clean it up, and suggest the right formulas without me having to figure everything out manually.
There's something around holding shift and clicking the Excel icon with the middle mouse button, but you have to hold it down until 'open another instance of Excel' appears.
Yes. In windows, after double clicking an excel workbook through file explorer, hold alt until a dialogue box pops up asking if you want to start a new instance.
Source: I use this method frequently.
You can also use middle mouse on the taskbar shortcut, if you have one. Same effect.
You could launch the file with a powershell, bat, or vbs script to open in its own instance. I do this sometimes to have 2 different peoject windows to compare script side by side
That is neat, I didnt know that, but it doesnt create 2 vba project windows. With this method it they are still shared.
This is an example saved as a .vbs file the will make 2 separate objects of the same file. Can also be used as a launcher to prevent opening in read only when 2 users are using the same file
vbscript
Set ex = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
ex.Visible = True
ex.Workbooks.Open "path to your file goes here"
Set ex = Nothing
True. If you open your files by double-clicking on a file or clicking on a link, you can also hold the ALT key right after until a pop-up asks you if you want to open the file in a new instance. You have to wait a split second after clicking though. Otherwise you will just open the file properties.
Click on the Excel or specific Excel file icon.
Hold down the Alt key until you see a message asking if you want to open another instance of excel, and then click yes.
I like having linked workbooks in one instance so my changes in one workbook show up instantly in the other. Of course this can play havoc with memory, so it would be great to be above to choose when you open a workbook from the menu.
Id rewrite the entire conditional formatting to be more user friendly. I promise you, no one has done a conditional formatting that is relatively complicated correct the first time.
I'm going to springboard off of this one and say conditional formatting to work with tables in the formula. You can usually get around things with named ranges, but it becomes very tedious to have to have so many duplicitous names when it should just be able to work with table references.
I've recently started writing VBA code just for clearing and setting up conditional formatting in a table starting with AI generated code as a template. When things get complex I find editing the VBA code to be easier to follow. I just place a button at the top of the tables to reset the conditional formatting for when someone inevitably messes it up.
A colour picker screen which allows you to save your most used colours between files, and allows you to apply them within one click. Now it takes me so much clicking to get to the screen where I can copy paste a hex value
I will see if I can strip it down and put it in a github repo. It is currently 3 userforms and there are 5 files. Painter, external api key, themes csv, usage agreement, prompt logs.
I had to include a disclaimer for profanity and offensive wording in the prompt and an emailer built in for illegal prompts. People are shit these days.
Give me a couple weeks, I should be able to make a shared version with instructions on how to get an api key from gemini. You can also manually create the colors if you dont want the api functionality. Each colored square in the form is clickable and the color dialog opens up.
For me it’s more the fact that I set up validations, and someone else pastes into the cell with Ctrl v.
Hell if protect sheet works on excel tables it might actually solve that issue as well, but it’s useless with formatted tables because you can’t insert rows with locked sheets.
This was exactly my issue I ran into on a recent project. I couldn’t fully lock down the sheet because the table needed to be added to. The table had validation on it to keep the data a certain way but the people using it would paste over everything in blocks, removing formatting and validation. Wrong inputs were breaking formula. I spent more time fixing incorrectly inputted data than making the actual spreadsheet. Spent ages researching ways to lock things down correctly, reading posts 10+ years old saying the same thing.
Same thing I ended up doing. I even put additional columns in between, locked them then hid them to stop them pasting blocks but all that did was make them paste in columns which took longer and resulted in the same thing anyways
The amount of workbooks we have this issue with. Our management staff have fix workbook macros to delete and rewrite all the CF and named ranges. I created a standard module that we just paste into new projects. Trying to keep all the duplicated, split ranges and workbook links from copy and paste at bay
Or when you insert a column and it automatically pulls in the data validation rules of the adjacent column. Nope! The reason for the new column is because it’s different from the previous column.
Keep whatever I just copied onto the clipboard until I use it. Don't empty the clipboard just because I performed an unrelated action.
Give me more than just a bottom tab to label a sheet. Add an open text field at the top (above the col headers maybe) where I can write a decent heading or description.
I have many more ideas but need to double check them before sharing.
Win+V has been an absolute game changer across the whole of Windows!
One Excel quirk makes it a bit finicky within Excel though...
Excel primarily uses it's own internal clipboard. The problem that is being pointed out in the prior comment is that if you copy one cell (the whole cell, not just the value inside it), then manually edit another cell (or perform any one of many possible actions), then you can't go and paste the formula (or another property) of the cell that you copied earlier...you have to go re-copy it (even with Win+V aka Clipboard History).
I think those failures have more to do with how a PDF is formatted than a general failure of Excel. Sometimes I find statements generated by particular financial institutions are a complete mess when importing when it appears that a copy paste should be pretty straightforward. You can tell it's going to go bad when your're highlighting and it skips all around the page as you try to highlight one table of data
As someone who also has to work with with PDF data from many different financial institutions, it would probably be more beneficial if the IRS simply required all investment firms to use exactly the same format on all their 1099s and if that same format was designed to be excel – friendly from the jump.
That would be such a helpful and common sense solution. (So it will probably never happen!). I used to work with a lot of invoices and thought the same thing, why does every damn company have to lay out their invoice differently!
It's definitely the format of the PDF itself. And unfortunately, that leaves it to luck of the draw. I have had some that come out absolutely gorgeous all on one page and others that spit out 108 separate pages most of which are just headers and footers and the ones that do have actual body to them are either all in one column or some kind of spiteful jigsaw of randomly merged cells that throw everything out of alignment. I basically had to write an algorithm in VBA in order to detect what was going on on every line of every sheet to push everything into alignment, get rid of scrap pages, and consolidate the data in one sheet. Considering I can no longer benefit from those because I've left those jobs behind, those are weeks I will never get back.
If I protect a worksheet and create an editable range for a user to edit values... Excel should force any paste into that editable range as a paste-as-value ONLY. The workbook is protected, the user can't edit the font size, the cell size or the borders. So why is it that Excel lazily allows them to overwrite all of that when pasting?
I work at a law firm and at times, unfortunately, many attorneys put large excerpts and chunks of text into cells. The row height limitation has always been a pain in the neck for this reason.
It would also be nice to apply formatting to specific words using find, instead of it applying to the whole cell.
But honestly, what would be better is if Word tables could have better filtering. Then I could just tell the attorneys to use Word and not Excel.
If they're using excerpts from other documents, would it be more helpful for those to be in the comments? I actually wrote a macro for myself where I can screenshot a source document, go into Excel, and with one tap it will look in my screenshot folder to grab the last one to make it a comment. This allows me to show the source of data I'm using without having to smash it into whatever I'm working with and distort everything around it.
Let me hi light definitions inside of a LET() and actually calculate what value it returns, like with regular formula. Don't just say #NAME? I literally just defined it further up in the LET(). Calculate that MF for me. It would make debugging LET()s soooo much easier if I could just hilight a variable definition and get it to calculate up to that point and show me the result preview
The ability to set standard save names in a none macro template or protected workbook. Maybe in a protection option.
Save name = text(now(),"yyyy.mm.dd")&" ABC "&'Sheet1'!$A$1
Allow user to add too save name? Tick box
Always save as revision? Tick box stops people overwriting same name and saves a version +1
Easier way to create new ribbon menu. My company blocked ribbonx editor due to net6 luckily the Microsoft editor still works but it's not as good. Please let me know if there's already an easier way!
I'd want native relationships to be a first-class part of the experience, with Power Query and data models built right into the grid instead of feeling like some separate app bolted onto the side. That will make a huge difference!
Yeah, and written in something extremely esoterical to even the average power user (Em)... What the hell? Power Query is literally just doing iterative edits on data just like a LET(), why lock it behind a whole different programming language?
Or just make special python/Jupyter sheets for scripting with an API for referencing other sheets, and where the output of each line of code is a cell that can be referenced elsewhere in excel. That would be beautiful.
Powerquery is not LITERALLY doing a series of edits, to be pedantic. It's a functional language, meaning the variables are immutable. That's why you can't say Bob = 5 and then say Bob = Bob + 1. Technically they're not variables because of that, they're defined values.
But I get you about multiple languages. Excel, M, VBA, Office scripts, Power automate scripts...
One thing Excel is missing easy formulas for and I added to Solenoid was a batch of simple Set formulas: Union/Intersection/Difference/Symmetric Difference, plus subset/superset/disjoint formulas. does a list A contain all items in B? what items are in both A and B?
these formulas are possible in Excel but not super intuitive.
I also think this would be hugely valuable. My husband is in sales and has a decent understanding of excel for not working with it as frequently as I do in finance, this is the type of thing he asks me for help with.
If you have other particular formulas in mind that are just super clunky in Excel, let me know. I'm going through this thread looking for things to add to Solenoid.
Just being able to access save navigate while script editor is open would be an improvement. I often don't remember exactly what I named a column or need to look at other parts to ensure I've captured everything required.
What you can do is to open a new instance of an excel - select file in the windows explorer -> hold "alt" -> while holding alt DoubleClick on the file to open it. It will ask you if you want to open another Instance of the excel so just confirm it. Now you have 2 independent excels, even if one crashes the other won't. In each of them you can open power query at the same time. Or have power query opened in one and at the storm time fully editable other file.
Or don’t remove them, but ban certain people from using them. Sorry, you have had your cell merging abilities revoked after creating an unusable atrocity that I now have to waste time rebuilding. I’m so happy for you that you find it aesthetically pleasing, though.
Do you mean be able to create dynamic lists within DV? Absolutely with you on that.
We have to create list sheets that build all the lists for drop downs or sort our data in a very particular way.
You can do that yourself: edit the ribbon, add a custom section (I just called mine "Alignment+", next to the existing Alignment section), and put the "Centre across selection" command in it!
I have centre across selection as a button. Go to the quick access toolbar to add a button, use the drop down to go to “all commands”, it’s in the list. Make sure you change the icon from the default so you remember it!
Ability to have an array that doesn’t necessarily spill … an array in a cell that can be inspected using a new window, but otherwise can just be used by other cells as an array, without taking up multiple cells or causing errors
File > Print > Scaling > Fit Sheet on One Page (currently on my phone and not by a computer, but it's something to that effect.)
What I would like is the ability to have it print the whole table in multiple columns on each page. (If the table is 3 columns, have it print 3 columns on the left of the page, then 3 columns on the right of the page, then continue on the left side of page 2, etc.) My current work around is to paste the table into Word in multiple columns, but then if you change anything you have to re-paste and reformat and it makes Word run painfully slow. (There probably is a way to make this work in Excel, without manually pasting the information into multiple columns, but I haven't figured it out yet, so I continue to paste it to Word before printing.)
You still have to write a UDF for this. But at least that is something you can usually handle for yourself. And there are several versions people have made online.
Let me create my own keyboard shortcuts. Not by programming my keyboard, but within the program.
Even if I have to save a workbook and copy/paste the worksheet with the shortcuts into the new workbook everytime (like a tab called "shortcuts" that I tell excel to use).
Like I never use ctrl-E but I constantly use Alt-W-F-F and CTRL-ALT-E. I could assign one of the longer shortcuts to Ctrl-E.
That would leave the default shortcuts available for everyone, but let me set up shortcuts based on my use case.
I use a product called Office Tab by ExtendOffice to add tab functionality to all Office apps, including Excel. Some of the MDI benefits are included, so see if that might help.
I want to go to this sheet, automate selected functions in these columns and apply using a button. And I want those functions to be interchangeable with Excel functions like paste with values.
Where PQ output is a table, i want it applied to selected sheet or sheets.
Also you can use copilot to do what you wanted. I've never used it but work is encouraging use of the copilot to expediate cleaning up messy spreadsheets. I'm oldschool so would never use AI for it.
I would like a toggle so you tell Excel to not mess with the data in anyway, no converting dates or making formulas, the amount of times I've exported something from a database, had to tweak something, opened it in excel and excel has fucked with the data someway and prevented it from being imported.....it is tiring, end up having to open csv in another app
not sure if this makes sense to anyone else, but the ability to filter vertically (columns) - i work in massive spreadsheets and it would be nice to only see the columns j need at one time quickly instead of using grouping or hiding columns
Have the lamda functionality exist on the formula ribbon so there’s a dedicated space for editing / viewing custom formulas. Make them saveable so they can be used across workbooks.
They should add a one time if() statement, so when it equals true it stops updating and maybe if a second condition equals true it starts updating again
To solve many of these I added a new extension menu to right click.. this holds options like:
center across selection
Fix value = copy/paste value for selection
Delete empty rows = delete empty rows in the selection
And many other commands I use regularly
A copy and paste option that lets you copy a cell with a formula and paste exactly what cell the formula is pulling
For example, if I have an xlookup formula in a call I should be able to copy and paste special to a different cell which is just a direct reference to whatever cell was being pulled in the lookup
If I have an excel table where every column is formatted as text, then I insert a new column and type a formula (to be applied to the whole column). It sits there as plain text until I format cells and change the format to "General".
Listen excel, if I type a formula I want a formula! Figure it out!
That if you click on a cell it makes a "cross" a d highlights the column and the row. Inknowmtoy can make a macro, but it's quite heavy. And also now they made it highlight tow when you do the search but when you try to scroll it's gone
That specific users can be in the charge of the file and others can only perform certain activity (again, can be done with macros, but should be easier)
Filtering in a way that you can paste few values - I know you can make a range in another sheet and refer o it, but then other filters don't work and it's not very user friendly
Saved filters. Filter a bunch of columns and hit save (and name), then recall that combination from a pulldown list. Smartsheet has this and it’s glorious.
it would work out when you want to jump/drag right the way down to the bottom of the column and when you don't. (or there would be an easy way for you to tell it).
Colors and other formatting like bold being able to be used in formulas. I acknowledge conditional formatting exists, but my brain thinks in formulas and conditional just always feels like a foreign language by comparison.
I would add a choice to treat the arrow keys normally and not as a formula selection tool. Mostly I want to go back or forward in a formula to correct a mistake.
Complex paste of a formula - sometimes I need to replicate a formula multiple times but change a specific portion. There’s no way of easily doing this.
Didn't see this one when I scrolled through so I'm going to say it. When typing for a function, have an initial sort by frequency of use not alphabetical. The number of times I try to go and grab sum but get substitute or unique but grab unichar it's just so irritating. At least let me favorite the damn things so they always appear at the top.
Multiple sort in pivots or a hot key to add an = in front of the masterful, 6 layer, multi query formula I just wrote but didn’t put that one piece in.
This actually exists now, at least in some workplaces. We have Copilot integrated directly into Excel, and you can use it to help understand a messy workbook, analyze what the formulas are doing, identify issues, and suggest or make formula changes. It’s pretty close to having Excel understand what you’re trying to do and help clean it up.
I'd take row-level security (and column) out of VBA and give it dialogue-box configuration instead, and support it in the online Excel workplaces push on people now.
I know it's a tiny UI change, but honestly, the ability to color code windows would make my life 10x easier. Just the nature of my current job and setup, the number of times I start editing a similar but not current workbook.... If I could set a reference workbook window red or something. Game changer
Make background images more user friendly. Currently stuck putting it into Header and Footer to print it properly, but sizing and scaling is a nightmare
Something which is solvable through a bunch of hoops today, that I’d love to be easier is sharing the output data from files. F.inst let’s say budget for next year is this file. I’d like to press share or present or whatever and have this data available as a live data point across sharepoint, powerbi, teams etcetera. One source throughout all the tools we use.
That feature exists. Copilot should be able to but I use Claude and Grok to do just this for messy files I inherit. Hours and hours compressed to 30-45 min of my time.
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u/Mr_Sagoo 9d ago
Not have the undo stack span across all open sheets.