Six new chart types
Visualizations are critical to effective data analysis as well as compelling storytelling. In Excel 2016, we've added six new charts—with the same rich formatting options that you are familiar with—to help you create some of the most commonly used data visualizations of financial or hierarchal information or for revealing statistical properties in your data.
Get and transform (Query)
Before analysis can begin, you must be able to bring in the data relevant to the business question you are trying to answer. Excel 2016 now comes with built-in functionality that brings ease and speed to getting and transforming your data—allowing you to find and bring all the data you need into one place. These new capabilities, previously only available as a separate add-in called Power Query, can be found natively within Excel. Access them from the Get & Transform group on the Data tab.
One click forecasting
In previous versions of Excel, only linear forecasting had been available. In Excel 2016, the FORECAST function has been extended to allow forecasting based on Exponential Smoothing (such as, FORECAST.ETS() …). This functionality is also available as a new one-click forecasting button. On the Data tab, click the Forecast Sheet button to quickly create a forecast visualization of your data series. From the wizard, you can also find options to adjust common forecast parameters, like seasonality, which is automatically detected by default and confidence intervals.
3D Maps
Our popular 3D geospatial visualization tool, Power Map, has been renamed and is now available to all Excel 2016 customers and is built into Excel. This innovative set of storytelling capabilities has been renamed 3D Maps and can be found along with other visualization tools by clicking 3D Map on the Insert tab.
PivotTable enhancements
Excel is known for its flexible and powerful analysis experiences, through the familiar PivotTable authoring environment. With Excel 2010 and Excel 2013, this experience was significantly enhanced with the introduction of Power Pivot and the Data Model, bringing the ability to easily build sophisticated models across your data, augment them with measures and KPIs, and then calculate over millions of rows with high speed. Here are some of the enhancements we made in Excel 2016, so that you can focus less on managing your data and more on uncovering the insights that matter.
Multi-select slicer
Now you can select multiple items in an Excel slicer on a touch device. This is a change from prior versions of Excel where only one item in a slicer could be selected at a time using touch input. You can enter Slicer multi-select mode by using the new button located in the Slicer’s label.
Publish and share your analysis with Power BI
A report is not complete without being able to share it with the right people. Once you’re finished preparing your data analysis, you can share it with your workgroup or clients through Power BI with just one button. Once published to Power BI, use your data models to quickly construct interactive reports and dashboards. With Excel Online support built into Power BI service, you can also display your fully formatted Excel worksheets as well.
Quick Shape Formatting
This feature increases the number of default shape styles by introducing new “preset” styles in Excel.
Insert pictures with the correct orientation
With automatic image rotation, once you insert an image into Excel, it automatically rotates the picture to match the camera’s orientation. You can manually rotate the image to any position after insertion. Note that this only affects newly inserted images and does not apply to pictures in existing documents.
Do things quickly with Tell Me
You'll notice a text box on the ribbon in Excel 2016 that says Tell me what you want to do. This is a text field where you can enter words and phrases related to what you want to do next and quickly get to features you want to use or actions you want to perform. You can also choose to get help related to what you're looking for, or perform a Smart Lookup on the term you entered.
Insights into what you're working on
The Insights pane, powered by Bing, offers more than just definitions. When you select a word or phrase, right-click it, and choose Smart Lookup, the insights pane will open with definitions, Wiki articles, and top related searches from the web. You can also get to Smart Lookup any time by going to Review > Smart Lookup and entering a query there.
Ink Equations
Including math equations has gotten much easier. Now, you can go to Insert > Equation > Ink Equation, any time you want to include a complex math equation in your workbook. If you have a touch device, you can use your finger or a touch stylus to write math equations by hand, and Excel will convert it to text. (If you don't have a touch device, you can use a mouse to write, too). You can also erase and select and correct what you've written as you go.
Simpler sharing
Choose Share on the ribbon to share your spreadsheet with others on SharePoint, OneDrive, or OneDrive for Business.
Improved version history
Now you can go to File > History to see a complete list of changes that have been made to your workbook and access earlier versions.
New themes
There are now three Office themes that you can apply : Colorful, Dark Gray, and White. To access these themes, go to File > Options > General, and then click the drop down menu next to Office Theme.
Data Loss Protection (DLP) in Excel
Data Loss Protection (DLP) is a high-value enterprise feature that is well loved in Outlook. We are introducing DLP in Excel to enable real time scan of content based on a set of predefined policies for the most common sensitive data types (e.g., credit card number, social security number, and US bank account number). This capability will also enable the synchronization of DLP policies from Office 365 in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, and provide organizations with unified policies across content stored in Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business.