Installed Excel v1902 on March 4, But No "Ideas for Excel". Why?

Copper Contributor

Are there components needed that my company doesn't provide?

7 Replies
I've been doing some research, and now I believe that our Office 365 Admin has not enabled App add-ins. Would that prevent the proper functioning of the Ideas in Excel feature? If so, how can I influence a policy change? For example, if cost is an issue is it possible to only enable free App add-ins, and would that be sufficient to get Ideas in Excel working?

Hi Mark,

 

Please clarify you don't have Ideas icon at all, or you have it and it doesn't work and you have only white pane when you click on it.

 

IMHO, Ideas is not an add-in, that is built-in functionality like, for example, modern Data Types (Stock and Geography). 

 

If first, it's most probably wasn't deployed for your tenant. If second, you need to play with IE security settings and/or compatibility view. What helped to me that's uncheck of the latest

image.png

 

Hi,

I think the feature has not yet been enabled on your your tenant.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/ideas-in-excel-3223aab8-f543-4fda-85ed-76bb0295ffc4

Note: This feature is being made available to customers on a gradual basis. It will first be available in English, French, Spanish, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese to Office 365 subscribers on Windows and Mac. If you are an Office 365 subscriber, make sure you have the latest version of Office.

Sergei, thanks for the reply. I can access our Excel Online using both IE 11 w/ the Compatibility View set as you show above, and using Chrome version 72.0.3626.121. In both cases I can see the "blue lightening bolt" on the Home ribbon, but when it's pressed I get an error message in the Ideas Preview panel. For my desktop Excel version 1902 I don't see the "blue lightening bolt" at all.

Mark, I didn't try Ideas with Excel Online (practically don't work with it), but will check bit later. Which exactly error do you have?

 

As for the desktop version it's coming. Microsoft usually announce some functionality for the build, after that starts slowly deploy it among tenants. Build number actually means only you definitely won't have such functionality on earliest build. For this very build and next ones - it depends.

Sergei, I attached a PNG showing the error.  I'm referring to our Excel Online to demonstrate the availability of this feature in our tenant.  I suspect that our proxies are not set properly for use within our firewall.  I have a service ticket opened for our MS Office support team.

 

According to the release notes for Excel version 1902, this feature is available now.  See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/monthly-channel-2019

Hi Mark,

 

Sorry for some delay with answer. I didn't find what exactly your error in Excel Online means. In any case new functionality could exist in Excel Online and not in Excel Desktop. As for the release notes that only means what the code with such new functionality is included into Excel desktop starting from that build. But that doesn't mean it will be switched on as soon as you upgraded on that build.