Excel UserVoice

Have you heard about Excel UserVoice? If you are a regular user of Excel and you are frustrated about a particular limitation or you can see where there is room for improvement, then this is for you.

Microsoft is now actively soliciting suggestions. It may be cruel to suggest that perhaps the creative well has run dry, but if you’re up for seeking improvements / helping them make more money, then this forum is definitely a worthy medium.

UserVoice is a third-party service, that has created the website www.excel.uservoice.com specifically to hear your suggestions and ideas for the next version(s) of Excel. Essentially, you put an idea up and others vote for it if they think it’s a good idea. The more votes you get, the more likely Seattle will sit up and take notice. Microsoft insists that they will “try their best” to respond to every suggestion that gets at least 20 votes. However, suggestions and ideas with fewer than five supporters with no activity for 60 days will be closed automatically.

To participate, simply create a user account if you want to add a new suggestion or vote on existing suggestions. Then, trawl through the various feedback forums listed, where you will find various ideas that others have suggested and you may vote for your favourites. If you can’t find what you are looking for, you can submit your own ideas. There’s over 2,000 ideas online already and we know for a fact some of the more popular ones have already been actioned by Microsoft.

If you really would like to make a difference to your spreadsheeting life, it’s well worth taking a gander and contributing to. Check out the website here. If you’re struggling with how to do something in Excel in general, remember you can always drop your friendly SumProduct team a line at contact@sumproduct.com .