2024 brought improved accessibility features, faster workbooks, ODF support, and many other properties and tools to Excel, and Microsoft is showing no signs of holding back in 2025. Let’s take a look at what we can expect to see in Microsoft Excel over the coming months.

1 Expanded Copilot Integration

Whether you like it or not, Microsoft will continue adding Copilot capabilities to Excel. With Copilot already added to the Microsoft 365 package in some regions, it’s reasonable to expect this widespread integration to continue through 2025.

In addition to helping you automate challenging Excel tasks, Microsoft’s AI tool will also broaden the program’s capabilities, meaning you’ll be able to do more things within Excel itself without having to flick between windows.

A good example of this increased capability is Copilot in Excel’s upcoming ability to not only search for answers online, but also add its findings to your Excel workbook. As a result, Copilot will be able to analyze and provide answers about your data within your spreadsheet, while also pulling key information directly from the web.

Within the app itself, Copilot will help you create the perfect prompt to generate dazzling visuals, including templates, tables, and charts. The updated tool will guide you through the process of writing the perfect prompt using a human-like two-way dialog, acting as a tutor that will help you in your adaptation to today’s AI world.

In fact, prompts are key to Copilot’s future success. Indeed, in order to maintain its usefulness in Excel, Copilot needs to understand human prompts and convert them into real-world actions. For this reason, you will soon be able to share custom prompts you created in Excel with members of a Microsoft Teams team. In other words, if you can’t hide the excitement of finding the ideal way to make Copilot in Excel perform an action that’ll benefit everyone else, you’ll simply share it with your teammates, and they’ll be able to utilize it through the Copilot Prompt Gallery.

Similarly, if those within your Microsoft ecosystem find a prompt particularly useful, they’ll be able to “like” it, and you’ll be able to see how many “likes” it has from within the Copilot Prompt Gallery directly within Excel.

Applies To: Desktop, Web, and Mac | Rollout Start: January 2025

2 Power Query Refresh From Authenticated Data Sources

Power Query, added to Excel initially as an add-in in 2010 before becoming part and parcel of the program a few years later, allows you to import or connect to external data, transform it in the Power Query Editor, combine it with existing data, and load it onto a spreadsheet.

Previously, after importing, transforming, combining, and loading the data, you could refresh Power Queries that sourced data from within the workbook and anonymous OData feeds. This 2025 update allows you to refresh Power Query data from sources that require authentication.

Applies To: Web | Rollout Start: March 2025

3 Sync Data From Microsoft Forms to the Excel Desktop App

This new Forms-Excel integration, which began rolling out at the end of last year, allows Microsoft 365 subscribers to create a form through their Excel desktop app, and see responses live as they come in. Previously, Forms could only perform live sync to Excel for the web.

Open a new Excel workbook on your desktop, and save the file to activate AutoSave. Then, click “Insert,” select the “Forms” drop-down icon, and click “New Form.”

Now, a new window will open containing Microsoft Forms. As you create your form in this new window, your Excel spreadsheet will update with the questions you add.

You can also click the “Forms” icon again to open the form in preview mode (“Preview Form”), open the form in edit mode (“Edit Form”), or open the form in a new tab with a dialog box that lets you send the form to respondents (“Send Form”).

As soon as people start submitting their responses, you’ll see them appear in your desktop spreadsheet.

If you’re a Windows customer with Microsoft 365 and don’t yet have this feature, you should see it very soon.

Applies To: Desktop | Rollout Start: November 2024

4 Remediation of Incompatible Formulas

Although this update applies mostly to businesses, it’s a welcome addition that solves lots of issues with those transitioning to Microsoft 365 from other cloud platforms. During this transition, you might encounter issues with Excel formulas and file links not working as they did previously, resulting in inaccurate data and Excel files that didn’t function properly.

To solve this problem, Microsoft confirmed that this year it will implement post-migration remediation to help you ensure all data and calculations work as expected.

Applies To: Web | Rollout Start: January 2025

5 More Tools For Advanced Data Analysts

Whether you’re an Excel power user, an intermediate spreadsheeter, or someone who uses the program for simple number crunching, there’s no doubt that Excel will remain relevant for years to come.

However, with the growth and popularity of more advanced tools like Tableau and Python, which offer real-time data analytics capabilities, it’s inevitable that Microsoft will continue to look for ways to develop the spreadsheet program, keeping it relevant and modern.

For example, last year, Microsoft rolled out Python in Excel’s desktop app, allowing business customers to process data in Excel with Python code. Now available for Personal and Family subscribers, you can type Python directly into a cell, and the Python calculations run in a secure container on the Microsoft Cloud before returning your results to the worksheet.

Starting in January 2025, Microsoft began the process of introducing Python in Excel for the web, a sign of the company’s intent to continue rolling out more advanced analytics tools in the coming months.

6 Inevitable New Functions

In 2024 alone, Microsoft added 14 new text and array functions (including TEXTBEFORE, VSTACK, WRAPROWS, and EXPAND) to Excel. Alongside those, we also saw the introduction of the LAMBDA function, which lets you create a function for a commonly used formula.

As a result, it’s a safe bet that Excel will gain more functions.

What’s more, 2025 might be the year that we see functions like VLOOKUP and CONCATENATE being phased out, with XLOOKUP and CONCAT introduced in recent years as more versatile and adaptable alternatives.

If you want to be among the first to see, trial, and give feedback on new Excel features, join the Microsoft 365 Insider Program. You can also see the Microsoft Roadmap for more information on what’s in the pipeline for release in the coming months.