- Excel cells used to just be for one value – but multi-value lists are soon to be supported
- Windows and Mac users can now try it out in beta
- You'll still have to specifically insert a list
Microsoft Excel has just seen one of the biggest updates to its cell architecture since launching, as users can now add multiple values into one single cell.
Until now, users have been unable to add comma-separate text, such as lists, into one cell, but a helpful update to the spreadsheet software is about to change that forever, with Excel not only seeing it as one text string, but also understanding that each item in a list is a separate value.
Introducing lists, arrays in cells and nested arrays as new features, Excel Senior Product Manager Jake Armstrong explained: "You can keep those values in one cell, while also keeping them separate for filtering, calculation and more."
Excel cells can now hold multiple values, like lists
Crucially, Excel won't suddenly start behaving like Word overnight, and users will still need to handle some very basic setup to create a list by inserting it from the menu. Commas and semicolons will then go on to denote a list within a single cell, allowing other core Excel functions like filtering to still work.
At the same time, Microsoft is also adding array and nested array support to single cells and four new functions – FLATTEN, HAS, HASANY and HASALL – to interact with them.
For now, though, these updates are rolling out to Microsoft Excel for Windows and Mac Beta Channels, so they're not yet generally available across the board. As such, there are some known issues involving conditional formatting, charts, find & replace and more.
More broadly, Microsoft's Excel roadmap is filled with plenty of other exciting upgrades for Excel as the spreadsheet software continues to transition into far more than just a basic number-handling tool – Microsoft knows that more and more users are using it for complex text entries, via AI and coding interactions, and the roadmap is evidence that Excel is adapting accordingly.
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