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My top 5

1. Use TRIMRANGE to prewrite formulas to expand below data in Excel.
2. Extract text based on complex patterns with REGEX in Excel.
3. TRANSLATE cell by cell in Excel.
4. Add hyperlinks in Teams messages.
5. Google sheets files now load significantly faster.

Core Office Apps

Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook and Word release regular updates to Microsoft 365 Apps and Services. To see or update your version, click File> Account. The Current Channel should now be on version 2502, which is the year 2025 and month 2 (February) with 2503 (March) coming later this month, the Monthly Enterprise channel releases updates a couple of months after the Current Channel and is currently on version 2412. The Semi-Annual Channel received an update in January 2025 up to version 2408. The Insider or Beta features are only available for a small selection of people who sign up to help test features, so they haven’t been reported explicitly, but they give a good idea of what is coming next.

Excel

You can follow along with the companion file plus this video showcases all that is new and pipeline in Excel:

Excel publishes a digest every month which I am a guest contributor to, here are articles for January and February 2025 and the image below shows which features are in which cycle.

Excel Desktop Current Channel only

1. Extract based on complex rules with REGEXEXTRACT: Excel launched 3 new functions which use REGEX coding to perform actions based on complex text strings. The first will extract text e.g. extract the email address from text in a cell regardless of whether it’s at the start, end or middle of the text in a cell using =REGEXEXTRACT(A1, "\b[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+.[A-Z|a-z]{2,}\b", 1). Other ideas are extract the next three characters after any digit (useful for postcodes), any date even if multiple exist etc. Consider using chat GPT or Copilot to write the code for the complex patterns.

2. REGEXREPLACE replaces complex text patterns: eg, replace all text inside brackets with your name.
3. REGEXTEST will return TRUE or FALSE based on the complex patterns eg, does this have an email? Note that Google sheets uses REGEXMATCH as an equivalent.
4. REGEX in XLOOKUP: The successor to VLOOKUP just got an upgrade. The optional match mode input can now use regex patterns to look things up. Eg, the email address to look up could appear anywhere in the cell.

5. Cell by cell translation: Use =TRANSLATE(cell to translate, [source language], [target language]). If source language is left blank, it is autodetected, if target is left blank, the result is translated into the default language of your computer.

6. =DETECTLANGUAGE can figure out which language a cell’s text is in.
7. Convert numbers into words: Interestingly, this was possible in the Thai language for decades using the obscure BAHTTETX function, so now use =TRANSLATE(BAHTTEXT(cell)) eg, 726 > “Seven Hundred and Twenty Six Baht”, but use TEXTBEFORE to exclude the word BAHT, more in this video:

8. Microsoft Forms integration: Click Insert tab > Forms to get a pop-up side bar with which to access Microsoft Forms.

Excel Current and monthly enterprise channels

9. Create formulas you can drag below for future data with TRIMRANGE: Dragging down a formula column below a table is a drag (pun intended), it often leads to an ugly zero or an error, =IF(cell=””,””,formula) is a common but complex way to avoid it. TRIMRANGE is built to avoid it. =A1+B1 dragged down to the 5th row would become =TRIMRANGE(A1:A5) + TRIMRANGE(B1:B5), the result would spill onto a 5 cell range using a dynamic array (the region would have a blue outline to show it). Optional inputs for TRIMRANGE allow users to specify whether to trim above or below a vertical range of the range or left/right of a horizontal range.
10. Use dot notation to trim a range: =A1.:.A5+B1.:.B5 would do the same using TRIMRANGE, you can choose whether to include . before the colon (to trim the top), after (to trim the bottom) or both.

The Monthly enterprise channel and Current Channels also has access to the following features reported on in previous blogs:

11. GROUPBY/PIVOTBY/PERCENT OF functions which allow a PivotTable via formulas
12. View tab > Focus cell which highlights the row and column of the active cell
13. View tab > Navigation Pane for a table of contents of your Excel worksheets
14. Insert tab > Checkboxes, tick them off as you go, and they return TRUE or FALSE
15. Comment filtering for your own comments, unresolved etc.
16. Review tab > Check Performance scans a file for excess formats which may bloat the file size
    Excel Desktop Semi-annual channel updates (already in other channels)

Excel Desktop Semi-annual channel updates (already in other channels)

17. Images inside cells: Previously, images could only be floating objects above cells, but now you can insert images inside cells. Cells with images can be referenced in formulas, in PivotTables and in filters if you use Alt text for the image. The companion file showcases this.

18. Get web data using AI: Often websites are formatted in a non-tabular way making it hard for Excel to extract. With the improved Get data from web (on the data tab), you can choose an AI extracted tabulation or alternatively, write examples to try to convert non tabular website data into tables as shown in the screenshot or video below (or the companion Excel file).

PowerPoint Current & Monthly enterprise channels

19. New find & replace pane: A sidebar on the right now appears when you use Find & Replace.

PowerPoint Semi-annual channel update (already in other channels)

20. Insert interactive poll: Audience can scan a QR code then see vote results updated live. To access it click Insert tab > Forms > Choose your form (or make a new one) > Present for interactive meetings.

Word Current and Monthly Enterprise Channels

21. Keyboard shortcuts for the format painter: The format fainter is copy & pasting formats, now Ctrl Alt C copies a format and Ctrl Alt V pastes it. Note PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote still use Ctrl Shift C and Ctrl Shift V (as Word had been using previously), but I imagine this will change soon.

PowerPoint, Word, Excel & Outlook Semi-annual channel updates (already in other channels)

22. New theme: Aptos is now the default font, plus there is a new default colour palette and shape outlines are thicker, all is aimed at accessibility improvements.
23. Insert Picture from Android mobile device: Paid your computer with your device via Insert Tab > Pictures > Mobile device.

Microsoft Teams

• Read more here

*These features are only available to AI enabled Teams, i.e. Teams Premium or Microsoft 365 with Copilot

24. Improved calendar native in Teams: With new views, customisations and sharing capabilities, it’s now similar to Outlook’s calendar, see more here
25. Take control of someone’s screen during screensharing on Web: Previously, to take control, both users had to be using Teams Desktop, now the screen shared can be on the web.
26. *Intelligent recap now available for ‘Meet now’ and meetings started from the chat
27. Record a video or audio of yourself in a Teams chat: Click + from the chat
28. Breakout room participants can move between rooms with this new setting
29. *Option to turn off copying or forwarding of live captions, transcript, and recap for meetings by organisers.
30. Presenters can now moderate the Q&A if permissions are granted. Note that Q&A must be turned on by adding the app to a meeting.
31. Forwarding Loop components, channel messages and app cards is now enabled in Teams chat
32. Add hyperlinks in Teams messages: Click “Format messages” then Insert link or select text and press Ctrl K (the hyperlink shortcut across many apps)
33. Schedule messages in Teams channels: Previously this was only allowed in chat
34. Chat, Copilot, and Notes panes can now be popped out during a meeting into new windows
35. Resize any popped-out window from Teams
36. A new filter is now under “Activity” for tag mentions
37. Meeting URLs are now shorter with fewer characters
38. *Share the AI composed Intelligent Meeting Recap with others via a link or share to Outlook. Meeting recaps are also now in Town Halls or webinars
39. For a webinar, town hall and structured meeting, you can now end a meeting for attendees and presenters return to the green room to debrief

Other Microsoft 365 apps

40. Add reactions to specific points in videos in Microsoft Stream
41. See a board view for My Tasks (which was previously only visible for organisational tasks)
42. Storyline from Viva Engage (formerly Yammer) can now be seen in Teams
43. File explorer now supports coloured folders
44. OneDrive Sync now automatically removes trailing spaces for file and folder names

Power BI

Power BI releases monthly update blogs, here they are for January and February, December didn’t get an update. The features below marked with a * must be turned on as preview options via File > Options and settings > Options > Preview settings.

45. Conditional formatting in visual calculations: The ability to add a calculation just for that table or visual is game-changing, now you can conditionally format them too.
46. Explore this Data to tweak your visual: Right click a visual > Explore this data to tweak filters, chart types, add new data and more).
47. PowerPoint integration updates: After you embed a Power BI page into a PowerPoint presentation, you can navigate to the next slide with Page Down, and reset all changes to the report
48. *Text slicer now supports multiple text terms: It searches your page using OR criteria
49. Treemap visual enhancements: Increase the space between groups, space between nodes and choose from one of three tiling methods, squarified, binary and alternating. Read the January blog post for more information.

Google Sheets

50. Improved cell referencing in Tables: Make use of #HEADERS, #DATA, #TOTALS to refer to that specific part of the table or #ALL for everything, plus get formula correction suggestions if you make an error.
51. Speed up improvements: Pasting data and filtering is now 50% faster and loading up data is 30% faster
52. People chip suggestions: If you have an email in a cell or first & last name, Google will suggest how to convert to people chips.

Google Workspace 

* Only items available only to paid subscribers of Google Workspace

53. Allow only specific people to fill out Google Forms: Click the new “Publish” button on the top right and click “Manage” to specify who can respond.
54. Forty new Google Docs templates: These make use of Docs’ newest features: pageless view, tabs and building blocks (all unavailable in Word currently). More here
55. Docs tables title rows: Set column types (dates, dropdowns, files, people etc.) and format titles.
56. Translate messages in Google Chat: Translation into your own language
57. Cover image enhancements in Google Docs: You can now choose from more stock photos, search for a picture from the web or use AI text to image to generate a cover image.
58.  Add polls in Google Chat: Type /poll in the chat box
59. Rename a group chat in Google Chat
60. Choose between “Comfortable” or “Compact” density in Google Chat
61. A new look for Google Calendar
62. *Request an e-signature on PDF files saved on Google Drive: Add fields for signature, name, date, address etc.
63. *Easy migration from Microsoft toolkit: Migrate files from OneDrive, chats from teams and more
64. Google vids (accessible here https://docs.google.com/videos) can now do looping videos and use a variety of voices for text to voice.

Google Workspace with Gemini package

65. Text to image now available in 7 more languages: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish. You can also chat in the languages on the Google Gemini side panel in Docs, Sheets, Drive etc.
66. Ask using Gemini in PDFs on Drive: Open a PDF in Drive and a side panel to chat with Gemini will appear.
67. Generate a chart with insights from Google Sheets data: The results show on a side panel.
68. Text to image now available in Google Docs
69. Use premade Gems to do certain tasks: reduce repetitive tasks, get deep insights etc. with premade packages. More here

Zoom meeting enhancements

70. Participants can request access to the recording easier: Request directly from the meeting card or recording link, no need to send separate chat messages.
71. Spotlight a shared screen: If multiple participants are screen sharing, hosts can now spotlight the important one

Users of Zoom Workspace can read about more updates here

Canva

72. Present offline: When using Canva presentations, you can use slide show mode including animations without internet
73. Record yourself narrating presentations with Canva mobile: The video saves automatically to Canva
74. On click animations: Click an item to reveal something
75. Annotate in presentation mode: On the bottom right, click the pen button to draw
76. Customise page numbers in presentations
77. Add data labels to charts: display callout values for each segment of a chart
78. AI quiz generator: As a follow-on to the recently released polls and quizzes, Canva can now auto generate multiple choice quizzes.
79. New templates with built in quizzes and polls aimed at educators
80. Generate new AI images inspired by your own image & text prompt: Go to Dream Lab, type a prompt and upload an image, more here.
81. Show text with image background using the TypeCutOut app.

82. Embed one Canva page into another design: Instead of pasting across designs, you can now embed a page from a design into another. Share & copy link from the source, then in the destination, paste the link into a textbox, click the pencil to edit, switch the “Display mode” to embed, and finally you can switch which page you’d like to view.

That wraps up the updates until February 2025, come back for more new features in June.