At least in the web version that comes with Microsoft365, Microsoft has announced it is making excel's autocomplete even smarter. Last week it announced formula suggestions and formula by example, both of which could help automate some of the work you had to do manually.

Formula suggestions are similar to what they say on the tin: if you type the equal sign into a cell, excel will try to suggest what type of formula you should be using, given the data that's around it. If you have a full of quarterly sales numbers and a column at the end labeled total, it might be a good idea to combine them in excel. The feature only works in English, and will suggest sum, average, count, counta, min, and max formulas It is not a new feature, but for some use cases, it could be a nice time saver.

Formula by example is similar to the flash fill feature that can detect patterns in data and fill out the rest of a column This video from Microsoft gives you an idea of what the feature is about; detecting a pattern where you are combing information from cells and then automatically generating a formula that will save you typing.

I tried to test out formula suggestions and formula by example on the internet, but couldn't get it to show up. It is possible that the features haven't made it to my account because they are now rolling out. I looked at the excel desktop app for Windows and Mac and they didn't seem to have the autocomplete features.

I admit I am not enough of a power user to understand some of the features Microsoft has announced, but I will leave that to the competitors of the recently-concluded Microsoft excel world championship.

There is a function for adding images with alt-text into your tables coming to Windows, Mac, and web, as well as the ability to get data from dynamic array to the Insider version of the Windows app for testing. One of the new features coming to the web is suggested links, which will help you fix broken links to other workbooks stored in the cloud.