What's New in Microsoft 365 in 2025

Author: David H. Ringstrom

Excel for Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based version of Excel, which means new features appear on an ongoing basis. In this course, author and Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA brings you up to speed on the latest improvements in Excel for Microsoft 365. David will explain how Microsoft 365 users are subdivided into channels, which means certain users may not see some new features until months after others do. The topics below show a typical assortment of what will be covered — David always updates the course right before presenting the material so that you can be up to date on the latest changes and improvements in Excel for Microsoft 365.

David is the author of “Microsoft Excel 365 for Dummies”, “Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures”, and has written or co-authored six other books. He demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Excel for Microsoft 365. David draws your attention to any differences in Excel 2021, 2019 or 2016 during the course and in his detailed handouts. The handouts include an Excel workbook with most of the examples he uses during his demonstrations.

Excel for Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that receives periodic feature updates. Conversely, perpetually licensed versions have year numbers in their names and do not receive any feature updates.

Publication Date: December 2025

Designed For
Professionals seeking to stay up to date on new features and functions in Excel for Microsoft 365.

Topics Covered

• Inserting checkboxes easily into spreadsheets in Microsoft 365
• Extracting text before or after a delimiter with the TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER functions
• Assemble a new collection of data by specifying the rows or columns to extract from another data set with the CHOOSEROWS and CHOOSECOLS functions
• Navigating through workbooks and identifying non-blank worksheet cells with the Navigation task pane in Microsoft 365
• Exploring the requirements and constraints of Microsoft Copilot in Excel
• Converting an array or range of cells to a single string of text
• Exploring how Python is implemented in Excel for Microsoft 365
• Transform an array of data into a single row or column with the TOROW and TOCOL functions
• Create your own custom worksheet functions without writing any code in Microsoft 365 with the LAMBDA function
• Keep or remove rows from the start or end of an array with the TAKE and DROP functions
• Embedding images into worksheet cells with the IMAGE function instead of having the graphics float above the worksheet
• Using the Insert Picture feature to embed images into worksheet cells, which can then be displayed elsewhere via cell references

Learning Objectives

• State which ribbon tab (menu) contains the Navigation task pane command
• Identify the Excel for Microsoft 365 function that enables you to separate text into two or more cells
• Identify the arguments that match the syntax for the CHOOSECOLS function in Excel
• Identify the condition that will prevent AutoSave from working in Excel, even when the file is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint
• Identify the primary purpose of AI Table Generation in Excel
• Identify how to add fields to a PivotTable in Excel

Level
Intermediate

Instructional Method
Self-Study

NASBA Field of Study
Specialized Knowledge and Applications (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
Prior experience with Microsoft Excel is recommended.

Advance Preparation
None