When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Slow ring Office Insiders on Mac get new data types in Excel and other improvements

If you're enrolled in the Slow ring Office Insider program and you're using macOS, Microsoft has released a couple of new updates to the Office apps today. As usual, these aren't exactly major updates, but there are a few new features.

For Excel, Microsoft has added support for new data types on spreadsheets, and it will recognize them automatically. When you insert data that looks like geographic data (such as city names) or stock data (acronyms such as MSFT, AAPL, and so on), Excel will give you the option to convert to those data types, so it can retrieve information like stock prices and more.

Excel is also now capable of refreshing Power Query queries from SQL Server. Once you set up a data source, which will require you to specify your login credentials, you'll be able to easily refresh it from the Data tab later on. If you don't want your login credentials to be saved, you can go to Data, then Connections, and choose the Clear Permissions option.

Finally, PowerPoint has received a small new feature that lets you hide the current slide in Presenter mode, showing just the next slide and enlarged notes instead. This can be useful to prevent you from looking at your screen rather than the audience during a presentation.

As usual, the updates roll out automatically, so you should have them soon. If you don't want to wait, you can always check for updates manually in the settings.

Report a problem with article
Next Article

Microsoft, Unity pull out of GDC 2020 over coronavirus concerns

Previous Article

Becoming the Hacker ($31.99 value) - free eBook download

Join the conversation!

Login or Sign Up to read and post a comment.

0 Comments - Add comment