There's a major version update for Excel for Mac just been released (in Preview right now). So far, it's just released to Insider Fast participants, but you can try it out by going to Help menu > Check for Updates and then opt into the Insiders program and choose 'Insiders Fast'.

Whilst there are finally some long-awaited improvements and features, Microsoft has been busy under the hood and has been updating the architecture of the product. By the software company's own press release, it states that "...these early builds may be a little rough around the edges"!!

For those with an Office 365 subscription in Excel, co-authoring and the dreaded AutoSave for OneDrive and SharePoint files are now available. Changes are automatically saved as you work, and when you co-author with others, you can see their changes as they work in real-time. There's also the charts which have been available for some time to PC users - namely the Waterfall, Funnel, Histogram, Pareto, Box & Whisker, Treemap and Sunburst visualisations.

If you don't have an Office 365 subscription, all is not lost. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) has been updated for everybody. Some additional methods, properties and objects available to Windows Office users will now work on Mac as well. It's not perfect though. There are still differences between the Mac and Windows Object Model, so you will still see "not supported on this platform" for some elements.

Welcome to the 20th century Mac users. No doubt they'll put Excel in iTunes soon...

For more details, check out our November newsletter, due out in, er, November. If you are not already a subscriber, why not sign up at the bottom of any SumProduct web page?