>
Your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets could soon be more dynamic than ever thanks to a potentially massive breakthrough from the company.
With a new Excel update, the spreadsheet software can insert images directly into a cell, making them part of a worksheet for the first time, rather than just floating on top of the sheet.
Microsoft says this new feature should make your Excel sheets more personal and customizable, taking your work to a whole new dimension.
Microsoft Excel Images
In his entry on the official Microsoft 365 roadmap (opens in new tab)the company notes that in addition to directly inserting images into cells, the new “IMAGE” feature also gives users a range of additional customization options.
Users can move and resize cells, sort and filter cells, and even work with images in an Excel table.
Exactly how this will work in practice is unclear, as the feature is still “in development” for the time being. However, it has an expected general availability date of December 2022, meaning we should hear more about how it works soon.
At launch, Microsoft says the feature will be available to all users on desktop, web, Mac and Android.
The news is the latest update to Microsoft Excel that aims to make the software more attractive and easy to use, as it appears to help drive more online collaboration between teams in the era of hybrid work.
Recently, the company said it will roll out “@mentions” in Excel to make collaborating on your spreadsheets smoother than ever.
@mentions allow users to tag their colleagues or colleagues, both within and outside an organization. These tags can be requests for edits, adding more information, or just clarification at some point, but can also be used to create, assign, and track tasks within your workbook.
The company also recently added the ability to add hyperlinks to comments added to spreadsheets, instead of having to copy and paste from plain text as was previously the case.