Ms Excel Capabilities

Microsoft Excel is one of the most versatile and useful programs in the Office suite. It doesn't matter if you need Excel templates for budgeting the next fiscal year, tracking your business inventory, planning out meals, or creating a fantasy football draft sheet, there are plenty of Microsoft Excel templates for you. Excel also contains fairly powerful programming capabilities for those who wish to use them that can be used to develop relatively sophisticated financial and scientific computation capabilities. Microsoft Excel Features. Almost all the professionals use this spreadsheet tool, and MS Excel is the universal language that speaks in almost all the offices. Portable data storage 1tb. As a starter or intermediate level user, you need to know some of the important features of MS Excel. In this article, we will show you 'Features of MS Excel.'.

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Microsoft has added so many AI-driven features to its Office 365 productivity suite this year that we wanted to pull together a comprehensive list — but it's not as straightforward as it might seem. Features like PowerPoint Designer, OneNote's ink to text, and Word's grammar and style suggestions got notable improvements, but they didn't first show up in 2019.

1. Excel: Deals with text, numbers, files and all kinds of data: Microsoft Excel generally deals with numerical data: All the data is stored one time, in one place. Lots of worksheets or documents are a store with similar, repeated data. Helps you to build highly functional data entry forms and report templates.
2. Nearly 30 years after it's initial introduction, Excel remains the worlds leading spreadsheet software. This brief article provides an introduction to Microsoft Excel, major uses, and key features every Excel user should be aware of. Major Uses for Excel.

That's because Microsoft doesn't simply ship AI-powered features in Office 365 once — it refines them over time. The team is constantly trying to figure out what makes users more productive and what doesn't. Many of the features also rely on machine learning models that adapt based on usage. 'You get this amazing signal about how it's making them more productive, how often are they using it and engaging with it, how often are they keeping the results of what you suggest to them,' Microsoft 365 general manager Rob Howard told VentureBeat. 'And that creates this really awesome feedback loop where we get to focus a bunch of energy on making them much more productive.'

Howard explained that AI features in Office are supposed to support and assist the user, not take over. 'It's really not about doing somebody's job for them, it's actually about being really assistive, about really helping them as they do their work,' he said. 'The user is still ultimately in control. The AI gets smarter based on that signal and we can help people more, but in all of these cases we're just taking out the busy work in between.'

After a couple of conversations with Microsoft, we settled on highlighting six major AI features added to Office this year. Three are generally available and three are in preview.

Outlook

Last week, when we talked to Cortana lead Andrew Shuman, he was really excited about Outlook's various Cortana integrations. Shuman frequently 'triages' his own email with Cortana.

'The overall theme of that release is that we really want to think harder about where Microsoft can really add value to the assistant landscape,' Shuman explained. 'And where we think we can bring value to our most valuable users. And that really is about the Microsoft 365 users who have rich calendars, rich contact information. Iphone 6 desktop manager. They're using Office every day, so we have a sense of what projects are important to them what people are important to them. And that really led us to kind of think harder about how we narrow our focus and drill really deeply into being this productivity assistant.'

Available: Play My Emails and Briefing Email

Play My Emails in Outlook uses to Cortana to help you stay on top of your inbox, especially when you're on the go. Microsoft wants Cortana to be your personal productivity assistant and give you back time in your day. Cortana reads out your new emails intelligently, meaning rather than reading every detail, it summarizes and surfaces information like the sender, time sent, and email contents. Play My Emails is currently available in Outlook for iOS in the U.S., with availability for Android in the works.

In preview: Scheduler

Scheduler taps Cortana to help you schedule your meetings. You can include Cortana in your email to participants and let it know what you need in the body of the email (duration, timing, and location of the meeting) using natural language. You can also just write 'Find a time for us' and ask Cortana to book a conference room or a call. If you have access to your participants' calendar availability, Cortana will book the meeting when everyone is available. If you're meeting with people outside of your organization, Cortana will email them a few possible meeting times and broker a time that works for everyone. Meeting participants can accept the suggestion or propose new times by using natural language. Cortana will then send out an invite to everyone for you. Scheduler is in preview today and will hit generally available in early 2020.

Excel

The first AI feature in Excel is a perfect example of Microsoft trying to bridge the gap between mobile and desktop. The second feature is all about gleaning insights from data for the user.

'You don't have to create 30 different pivot tables or pivot charts to understand all the different ways that your data works,' Howard told VentureBeat. 'You've got an assistant that's here and is ready to help do all that busy work for you and let you focus on the insights from the data.'

Available: Insert Data from Picture

Ms Excel Capabilities Examples

Insert Data from Picture feature in the Excel mobile app helps you import analog data. With this feature, you can easily grab data in a table from a physical piece of paper. You can thus convert financial spreadsheets, work schedules, task lists, timetables, and so on into a digital format in Excel. Insert Data from Picture supports 21 languages on Android and iOS.

In preview: Natural language queries

Excel supports natural language queries, meaning you can ask a question about your data and get quick answers without writing a formula. Using AI, Excel will quickly answer data questions using formulas, charts, or pivot tables. This feature is available for Office Insiders on Windows, Mac, and Excel for the web in English. Microsoft says it will hit general availability in early 2020.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint has defined business presentations over the past decade. But the software itself hasn't seen major gains. The AI features Microsoft has been adding over the past few years have made the tool much smarter.

'We're taking a bunch of different basic AI algorithms — many of the services that are available to developers in something like Azure Cognitive Services — [and] we're bringing them all together into a single experience,' Howard said. 'That [way] we can help people be a more confident and more effective presenter within the tools that they're already using.'

Available: Live Captions and Subtitles

If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or speak a different language from the presenter, a PowerPoint presentation can be difficult to follow. Live Captions and Subtitles in PowerPoint help everyone in the room understand the presentation. Powered by AI, this feature provides captions and subtitles for presentations in real time. Activision blizzard launcher. Captions and subtitles can be displayed in the same language that the presenter is speaking or as a translation. The feature supports 12 spoken languages and displays on-screen captions or subtitles in over 60 languages for Office 365 subscribers on Windows, Mac, and the web.

In preview: Presenter Coach

Presenter Coach uses AI to help business professionals, teachers, and students improve their presentation skills. When you enter rehearsal mode and speak into a microphone, the feature gives you real-time on-screen feedback on pacing, the use of filler words, and inclusive language. It even warns you if you are reading off your slides. At the end of the presentation, Presenter Coach generates a report so you can practice and learn from the feedback. The feature is available in public preview for English users in PowerPoint on the web.

Next year, Howard promised Office users can expect Microsoft to focus more on writing assistance (like Ideas in Word) and mobile productivity (like Excel's Insert Data from Picture).

Scheduler taps Cortana to help you schedule your meetings. You can include Cortana in your email to participants and let it know what you need in the body of the email (duration, timing, and location of the meeting) using natural language. You can also just write 'Find a time for us' and ask Cortana to book a conference room or a call. If you have access to your participants' calendar availability, Cortana will book the meeting when everyone is available. If you're meeting with people outside of your organization, Cortana will email them a few possible meeting times and broker a time that works for everyone. Meeting participants can accept the suggestion or propose new times by using natural language. Cortana will then send out an invite to everyone for you. Scheduler is in preview today and will hit generally available in early 2020.

Excel

The first AI feature in Excel is a perfect example of Microsoft trying to bridge the gap between mobile and desktop. The second feature is all about gleaning insights from data for the user.

'You don't have to create 30 different pivot tables or pivot charts to understand all the different ways that your data works,' Howard told VentureBeat. 'You've got an assistant that's here and is ready to help do all that busy work for you and let you focus on the insights from the data.'

Available: Insert Data from Picture

Ms Excel Capabilities Examples

Insert Data from Picture feature in the Excel mobile app helps you import analog data. With this feature, you can easily grab data in a table from a physical piece of paper. You can thus convert financial spreadsheets, work schedules, task lists, timetables, and so on into a digital format in Excel. Insert Data from Picture supports 21 languages on Android and iOS.

In preview: Natural language queries

Excel supports natural language queries, meaning you can ask a question about your data and get quick answers without writing a formula. Using AI, Excel will quickly answer data questions using formulas, charts, or pivot tables. This feature is available for Office Insiders on Windows, Mac, and Excel for the web in English. Microsoft says it will hit general availability in early 2020.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint has defined business presentations over the past decade. But the software itself hasn't seen major gains. The AI features Microsoft has been adding over the past few years have made the tool much smarter.

'We're taking a bunch of different basic AI algorithms — many of the services that are available to developers in something like Azure Cognitive Services — [and] we're bringing them all together into a single experience,' Howard said. 'That [way] we can help people be a more confident and more effective presenter within the tools that they're already using.'

Available: Live Captions and Subtitles

If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or speak a different language from the presenter, a PowerPoint presentation can be difficult to follow. Live Captions and Subtitles in PowerPoint help everyone in the room understand the presentation. Powered by AI, this feature provides captions and subtitles for presentations in real time. Activision blizzard launcher. Captions and subtitles can be displayed in the same language that the presenter is speaking or as a translation. The feature supports 12 spoken languages and displays on-screen captions or subtitles in over 60 languages for Office 365 subscribers on Windows, Mac, and the web.

In preview: Presenter Coach

Presenter Coach uses AI to help business professionals, teachers, and students improve their presentation skills. When you enter rehearsal mode and speak into a microphone, the feature gives you real-time on-screen feedback on pacing, the use of filler words, and inclusive language. It even warns you if you are reading off your slides. At the end of the presentation, Presenter Coach generates a report so you can practice and learn from the feedback. The feature is available in public preview for English users in PowerPoint on the web.

Next year, Howard promised Office users can expect Microsoft to focus more on writing assistance (like Ideas in Word) and mobile productivity (like Excel's Insert Data from Picture).

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The Top 10 Excel Features

Every Excel user has a favourite tip. So we decided to bring some method, data, and science to bear in this hotly debated topic, and to come up with the Top 10 Excel Features.

We consulted the research of 30 of the world's leading Excel experts as well as our own internal Excel experts. We then grouped up and consolidated the emerging features, and applied a scoring methodology and index to produce a definitive ordered list of the 100 most useful Excel features, hacks, tips and tricks.

These are the top 10 Excel features as determined by our ranking.

Skills are ranked by usefulness and given a score out of 100. Each skill also has a difficulty rating (out of 5) based on the complexity and sophistication of the feature. Finally, we provide the average time in minutes it takes the average learner to go from no knowledge to proficient.

1. Conditional Formatting

Utility: 100 | Difficulty: 3 | Learn in 180 mins

Making sense of our data-rich, noisy world is hard but vital. That's why the first of our Top 10 Excel Features is so important. Used well, Conditional Formatting brings out the patterns of the universe, as captured by your spreadsheet. That's why Excel experts and Excel users alike vote this the #1 most important feature. This can be sophisticated. But even the most straightforward colour changes can be hugely beneficial. Suppose you have volumes sold by sales staff each month. Just three clicks can reveal the top 10% performing salespeople and tee up a meaningful business conversation.

2. PivotTables

Utility: 95 | Difficulty: 3 | Learn in 240 mins

At four hours to get to proficiency, you may be put off learning PivotTables, but don't be. Use them to sort, count, total or average data stored in one large spreadsheet and display them in a new table, cut however you want. That's the critical thing here. If you want to look only at sales figures for specific countries, product lines, or marketing channels, it's trivial. Warning: make sure your data is clean first!

3. Paste Special

Utility: 88 | Difficulty: 3 | Learn in 10 mins

Grabbing (i.e. Copying) some data from one cell and pasting it into another cell is one of the most common activities in Excel. But there's a lot you might copy (formatting, value, formula, comments, etc.) and sometimes you won't want to copy all of it. The most common example of this is where you want to lose the formatting – the place this data is going is your own spreadsheet with your own styling.

4. Add Multiple Rows

Utility: 87 | Difficulty: 0 | Learn in 10 mins

Probably one of the most frequently carried out activities in spreadsheeting. Ctrl-Shift + is the shortcut, but actually, it takes longer, so Right Click is what we recommend. If you want to add more than one, select as many rows or columns as you'd like to add and then Right Click and add.

Ms Excel Capabilities

5. Absolute References

Utility: 85 | Difficulty: 2 | Learn in 15 mins

Indispensable! The dollar in front of the letter fixes the column, the dollar sign in front of number fixes the row F4 toggles through the four possible combinations.

6. Print Optimisation

Utility: 84 | Difficulty: 3 | Learn in 120 mins

Everyone has problems printing from Excel. But just imagine if what you printed were always just what you intended to print. It IS actually possible. There are a few components to this though: print preview, fit to one page, adjusting margins, print selection, printing headers, portrait vs landscape and spreadsheet design. Invest the time to get comfortable with it. You'll be carrying out this task many, many times in your working life.

7. Extend formula across/down

Utility: 84 | Difficulty: 1 | Learn in 5 mins

The beauty of Excel is its easy scalability. Get the formula right once and Excel will churn out the right calculation a million times. The + crosshair is handy. Double clicking it will take it all the way down if you have continuous data. Sometimes a copy and paste (either regular paste or paste formulas) will be faster for you.

8. Flash Fill

Utility: 84 | Difficulty: 2 | Learn in 30 mins

Excel developed a mind of its own in 2013. Say you have two columns of names and you need to construct email addresses from them all. Just do it for the first row and Excel will work out what you mean and do it for the rest. Pre-2013 this was possible but relied on a combination of functions (FIND, LEFT, &, etc). This is much faster and WILL impress people.

9. INDEX-MATCH

Utility: 82 | Difficulty: 4 | Learn in 45 mins

This is one of the most powerful combinations of Excel functions. You can use it to look up a value in a big table of data and return a corresponding value in that table. Let's say your company has 10,000 employees and there's a spreadsheet with all of them in it with lots of information about them like salary, start date, line manager, etc. But you have a team of 20 and you're only really interested in them. INDEX-MATCH will look up the value of your team members (these need to be unique like email or employee number) in that table and return the desired information for your team. This is worth getting your head around this as it is more flexible and therefore more powerful than VLOOKUPs.

10. Filters

Ms Excel Capabilities Example

Utility: 81 | Difficulty: 2 | Learn in 60 mins

Explore data in a table quickly. Filtering effectively hides data that is not of interest. Usually, there's a value e.g. ‘Blue cars' that you're looking for and Filters will bring up those and hide the rest. But in more modern versions of Excel, you can now also filter on number values (e.g. is greater than, top 10%, etc), and cell color. Filtering becomes more powerful when you need to filter more than one column in combination e.g. both colors and vehicles to find your blue car.

Excel Statistical Capabilities

This article was originally published on Business Insider.