What you need to know
- You’ll soon be able to include images as well as other data types in your PivotTables in Microsoft Excel.
- PivotTables are text-based, but Microsoft is providing users with a new way of presenting their data.
- The feature is currently rolling out to Office Insiders on Windows and Mac.
Microsoft is currently testing a new feature with Office Insiders that lets them incorporate images as well as data types like Stocks and Geography into PivotTables while using Excel. The new feature is designed to provide users with a richer and more aesthetically pleasing look.
As you might already know, the PivotTable features in Microsoft Excel are used to create dashboards, reports, and summaries. And for the longest time, the feature has been text-based, thus limiting how users can present their data.
However, Microsoft Excel’s feature is designed to enhance this experience further for users by providing them with multiple new ways through which they can present their data.
While data types and in-cell images are a powerful part of modern Excel, PivotTables have only been able to use a text description of these modern content types. Now, the images and data types come intact to your PivotTable rows and columns. They also include the same interactions you have in your source data (image cards, data type icons, data type cards, and so on).
Microsoft
The feature is currently rolling out to Office Insiders both on Windows and Mac, running version 2307 (Build 16609.20000) or version 16.74 (Build 23060401), respectively. As usual, you might not be able to access this feature immediately. This is because they roll out gradually to users in phases.
In related news, Microsoft recently faced an outage that affected its Microsoft 365 service, affecting users based in Western Europe. The company narrowed down the issue to a faulty data center in Germany, but the issue has since been resolved.
