Microsoft outlines new upcoming features for Excel Web app, based on user feedback

Ron

Office Web Apps

Microsoft has been working hard as of late to ensure the Office Web App suite is as comprehensive as possible, especially for enhancing productivity. Office Web apps, for those unfamiliar, allows you to create full-fledged Office documents from the web. In an blog post today, Microsoft outlines the upcoming new features for the Excel Web app.

“Hopefully you’ll agree that the functionality we’ve been adding is useful, and among the most important for us to add to Excel Web App. The investments we’ve made have been informed by the feedback customers like you provide on what’s most important. When you offer your input, we do our best to listen and get those features into the product as quickly as we can,” Microsoft stated in an official blog post.

Listed below are a number of new features that have been requested by Excel Web users. Microsoft adds that these features are not in any particular order and each feature takes a different amount of time to develop. If you want to request a feature, simply complete an official Microsoft survey. Here are the new features expected for the Excel Web app:

  • Adding and Editing Freeze Panes (they are already viewable) 
  • Adding and Editing Comments (they are already viewable) 
  • Android Tablet Support 
  • Editing Files with VBA 
  • Chart Editing 
  • Viewing, Moving, and Resizing Shapes 
  • Loading XLS files in O365 (already works in SkyDrive) 
  • Print to PDF 
  • WEBSERVICE Functions 
  • Common Keyboard Shortcuts 
  • Custom Sort a Range (sort on multiple columns) 
  • Insert an Image 
  • Hide/Unhide Rows & Columns 
  • Reorder Sheets 
  • Show Aggregates for the Selected Range in the Statusbar 
  • Rename a Spreadsheet from within Web Excel 
  • Drag and Drop Cells in a Sheet 
  • Protect Sheets from Being Edited by Others 
  • Insert and Modify Apps for Office