M365 Changelog: Excel for the Web Usability Enhancements

MC244887 – Delighting our customers with faster, smoother, and richer experiences in Excel for the web is an uncompromised goal across our Excel team. We recently added performance improvements to Excel for the Web scenarios (see MC239095) and today we’re announcing several features to help customers better navigate and manipulate Excel for the web files in a browser.

In response to customer feedback, this represents the next set of improvements targeting Navigational and Usability enhancements in Excel for the web. This communication is meant to highlight the changes our customers are asking for, and to reaffirm our commitment and ongoing investment in Excel for the web rich end user experiences.

Microsoft is on a pathway to add smoother and richer navigational experiences to Excel for the web starting with these scenarios: easier worksheet navigation, multiple range selection, zooming in / out, enabling Excel keyboard shortcuts by default, enabling Version history, and managing Regional settings.

How this will affect your organization

When using Excel for the web, the following scenarios have been optimized for usability and navigational experiences:

• Easier worksheet navigation: When opening an Excel workbook with multiple worksheets, users can now jump directly to the worksheet they want. Simply click on the new All Sheets button in the lower left corner and then select the desired worksheet.
• Multiple range selection: Users can now select multiple ranges which are not adjacent to each other, and fill color (or copy-and paste). Holding the Ctrl key now enables selecting multiple ranges.
• Zoom in/out: Excel for the web now supports multiple ways to zoom in/out. Zoom in for a close-up view of your data or zoom out for an overview of the worksheet. New Zoom methods include: Pinch/stretch to zoom on touch screen or trackpad, Ctrl + mouse wheel, Ctrl Alt +/- key, Click the +/- button or selecting a predefined zoom level from 25% to 200% in the bottom right corner of the screen
• Excel keyboard shortcuts by default: Excel for the web now supports keyboard shortcuts by default (e.g. Keyboard shortcuts like Alt, Ctrl-1, Ctrl-Shift-A, etc., now go to Excel for the web and not the browser). To see the list of Excel keyboard shortcuts, click on the Help tab and select Keyboard Shortcuts. Note: The Override browser shortcuts setting is checked by default.
• Version history: Users can now view and restore previous versions of Excel files using version history. Users can track activities in the workbook by others, collaborate with others and revert to a previous version as needed.
• Regional settings: Users can now change regional settings in Excel for the web to set their date/time, number, and currency formats.

More information for these features can be found via the link to the blog.

What you need to do to prepare

You may want to notify your helpdesk to make them aware of these improvements, and to prepare them in response to Excel for the web changes / enhancement related helpdesk calls.Blog