Sheet View is generally available
Published Nov 25 2019 04:15 PM 91.8K Views
Microsoft

Have you ever collaborated with someone else in a worksheet, looking at a large data set, and suddenly the table shrinks and you’re unable to finish your work? Often, this happens when someone adds filters to or sorts a column in a table of your worksheet. We love all the benefits of collaboration, but it does mean that when collaborating, everyone's changes are immediately seen in the document by you. We realize that our users want to collaborate in a document, but also accomplish their own tasks while sorting or filtering data in a table. 

 

Introducing Sheet View 

You spoke – we listened. Introducing Sheet View on Excel for the web, a new way of letting you create customized views in an Excel worksheet to sort and filter your data.  You can filter to display only the records that are important to you without being affected by others collaborating in the document. All your cell level edits propagate through the file regardless of your view, so you can make all of your in-cell edits in your Sheet View, too. 

 

Let’s see it in action: 

171609_FY20Q2_M365_APPS_Excel_Sheet_View_GIF_v05.gif

 

If you’re in the document with others, you’ll receive a prompt to enter a Sheet View if you want to sort and filter in a separate view. You can also create a new Sheet View by going to the View tab and clicking the eye icon labelled ‘New’.  

 

clipboard_image_0.png

 

Sheet Views are temporary initially, so once you’re done with your work, you can choose to save the view to reuse later or discard it. To discard, simply exit the Sheet View.  Views can be accessed again in the document at a later time once saved. All you need to do is click on the View tab and find the Sheet View you saved in the drop down list on the left side of the ribbon. 

 

Availability Notes 

We’ve started the rollout to users on Excel for the web and will be available to all Excel for the web users within the coming weeks. 

 

Learn More 

Sheet View in Excel for the web

Learn more about Sheet View 

 

To stay connected to Excel and its community, read the Excel blog posts and send us ideas and suggestions via UserVoice. You can also follow Excel on Facebook and Twitter.  Let us know your thoughts on Sheet View! 

68 Comments
Brass Contributor

Great Feature! will this feature be available on the desktop version?

this is amazing!

Brass Contributor

Being Excel on the web version only, makes this fairly useless in our org, with all its other limited capabilities, everyone here is using the desktop version. A certain amount of irony to the fact that Excel on the web can't perform several basic Excel desktop functions, but they jumped over those and went right to adding this. 

Silver Contributor

@Avani_Reddy, great feature!

Copper Contributor

Hi Avni,

I see that this functionality is available only for me in my organization and not others

Do you know why

Copper Contributor

When should we expect this to show up in our organization?  I'm not familiar with the typical length of a rollout on the web.

Copper Contributor

i found the same question ,this just work on my web client, not for the other members, why?

Copper Contributor

@Avani_Reddy  When I tested this feature in an excel file (shared, in web), this feature is appearing for me but not for my colleagues. Is there any specific settings to be activated ? or this feature is yet to be rolled out for all users?

Copper Contributor

I work for a County Government that use Office 365 with Excel Online, but I do not yet see the sheet view included in our Excel online.  Is there a certain update or release that would include this for us?

Copper Contributor

I have a 365 ProPlus account.  I am using Excel for web via portal.office.com.  This feature is not available to me.

Copper Contributor

Hello, the ShareView Option is not available. How do i add it?

clipboard_image_0.png

Copper Contributor

We're having the same issue.  It works on mine, but not others in my org.  I didn't do anything to turn this feature on, it was just available one day.  How does someone activate this feature if it isn't showing for them?

@Bryan360 , you can do nothing with that, only wait while Microsoft activate the feature for the account

Copper Contributor

@Sergei Baklan thanks for the note.  We're all on the same corp 360 account.  It's odd that they'd only activate this for some users in an account, but not all at once.

Copper Contributor

I work in teams and that is a great new feature.  Thanks for the heads up.

Copper Contributor

I'm not seeing this feature in Excel On the Web yet. Does this feature need to be reviewed/approved by an admin before it will start showing up?

@ontgov5682 Nope, that's only Microsoft switch it on gradually. Please wait till it'll be deployed.

Copper Contributor

Looking forward to this being made available. Hope it is soon!!

Will it work on all browsers (Edge, Explorer, Chrome and Firefox)?

Copper Contributor

When is this Sheet View going to be rolled out?

We developed a 'tracker' to track all ministerial correspondence and briefs across five branches so we were all updating one tracker. I am in the Deputy Secretary's office and look after three branches. We quickly discovered we couldn't roll out the 'one tracker for all' when we discovered that if one person filters so they can see only their branch items everyone else's view is filtered. So we are now still all using separate trackers and cross checking against the branch trackers.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Avani_Reddy, Do you have an update on when this will be completely rolled out? My team and I are quite eager to make use of this functionality, but it is still not available.  

 

Copper Contributor

This is a great feature but we currently cant use it, when will the update be rolled out to everyone? 

Copper Contributor

Is there any point to this blog if no one from Microsoft actually responds to our question/s? These questions date back to October/November 2019.

Copper Contributor

Was able to use this feature for about a week or so and then, since Friday, it has disappeared. What is going on?

Copper Contributor

This is a great feature, but doesn't it require the user to remember to create the sheet view?

 

The problem I have is that if I send an invite to 100 people to collaboratively edit an Excel spreadsheet with filters, it only takes one of them to leave the filters in a nondefault state to ruin the party for everyone.

 

I suggest allowing the creation of a "Default" sheet view that is used whenever the sheet is opened online for collaboration. This would allow the default view to be fine-tuned by the spreadsheet maintainer.

Brass Contributor

Will this being moving to the desktop app? Users need to be able to use vlookup and macros that cannot be done on the web.

Brass Contributor

Hi @Avani_Reddy, when will the global roll-out be complete? 

"Sheet View is generally available" is confusing.  My account is configured "Targeted release" (so I have early access to deployed changes) but I don't have this feature.  I'd say that this feature hasn't appeared as General Release on our Tenancy yet, so some indication of likely GLOBAL availability would be most appreciated. 

@TheAndy , if your account is configured on Targeted that doesn't mean you have earlier than other tenant users access to new functionality for web apps. That's only for installed on client side apps.

Brass Contributor

Hi @Sergei Baklan interesting - but not what Microsoft says: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/release-options-in-office-365?view=o365-worl...  I've certainly experienced early release of SharePoint Online features and updates for example.

 

But could explain why I don't see the likes of Excel Online updates in the O365 Admin Message Centre :)

Copper Contributor

It works! For the first time this morning my colleague went to filter our tracker (we have to tell each other so someone else doesn't try to filter at the same time) and a screen popped up asking 'do you want to do this for you only or everyone?' She filtered and my screen did not change. The same thing happened for me. I just noticed in the last 2 minutes 'sheet view' has appeared in the drop down when you filter. Fingers crossed there are no bugs.

Copper Contributor

Finally! I will have to give it a try. @AlisonKibby thanks for sharing!

 

Copper Contributor

Hopefully you don't input a great deal of super important data when you are in the "only for me" mode. We've had to quit using it because it is hit or miss if that data will be retained when using this view. 

Copper Contributor

We've had data loss issues too.  Not always, but enough to have created problems. 

 

Sheet View is still helpful for individual filtering of shared sheets so you're not changing everyone else's view, but when making data changes the we want to be sure stick, we get out of sheet view to make the change.

Copper Contributor

I see Sheet View available in my Excel Online workbook, but the option is grayed out. Why is this happening and what's the solution?

 

Sheet View 1.pngSheet View 2.png

Copper Contributor

What about under View rather than dropping down your filter @ftk688?

 

We are having minor issues like not being able to delete a row but then you go back 5 minutes later and you can delete it, or you muck around with the filters. Same with copying and pasting text. Haven't lost data yet. Seems to be working ok except for a few glitches that need to be rectified. 

 

A box appears when it won't let you you do something and asks for feedback which I provide.

 

Copper Contributor

@AlisonKibby I tried attaching it but I guess it didn't go through, but it's grayed out even under "View".Sheet View 1.png

Microsoft

Hi all, everyone should now be able to see Sheet View on Excel for the web. If you have any problems, please send feedback via Actions>Feedback to help us better dive into the issue.

 

For comments on data loss - all cell level changes you make to the sheet in a Sheet View should go back to the main "Default" view of the document (e.g. if you change a value in a cell while in a Sheet View, you should see that change also in the "Default" view). If you are finding this is not the case, please send feedback.


We appreciate all of your continued feedback and responses and are glad to update that work for Sheet View on desktop has started.

Copper Contributor

I'm experiencing the same issue as @ftk688. I can see that the feature is there, but I can't actually click on it to use it. I think a few other people are probably having the same problem, so it would be great to know if there is a solution. This feature would be super useful to us, so it would be great if it could be activated as soon as possible. Thanks!

Copper Contributor

@ftk688are you by any chance using box? I just checked and it appears the feature is greyed out when the file is saved on box, but when the file is on OneDrive, it seems to work. It would be great to get the feature to work on box saved files, as that is what quite a few business use.

Copper Contributor

@x2fer xf2er Yes I am! This is Excel Online via box. @Avani_Reddy could this be an issue?

Microsoft

@ftk688 yes, Sheet View is only supported on files stored in Office 365. Thanks for pointing that out, @x2fer.  

Copper Contributor

@Avani_Reddy Thanks for the info! That's super helpful and finally helps me understand what's going on. Is there any plan for Sheet View to be supported on Box, and all other Excel Online platforms? As @x2fer , a lot of companies use Box as a platform, so it would be very helpful.

Microsoft

@ftk688 Sheet View is currently supported on files hosted in OneDrive or SharePoint in Office 365. We do not have plans to support other cloud solutions at the moment.

Steel Contributor

Perfect Feature. This is what better is to use Excel Online version...

Copper Contributor

Great feature, I am looking forward to the release in the desktio application.

Copper Contributor

Why is it when the document is read only the Sheet Views are disabled?   We have a document that is shared with many but only a few need access to edit.  The Sheet View is setup for each user and works great if they have edit access but when we change the permission to read/view only the Sheet View section is grayed out so they cant see their customized views.

Copper Contributor

Je ne comprend tellement pas dans quelle situation le fait que voir ce que les co-éditeurs filtrent peut être utile... L'affichage des filtres d'un classeur ne devrait jamais être partagée. Comme dans l'ancienne façon de partager.

Copper Contributor

@Avani_Reddy - I'm attempting to use Excel Sheet View to solve an issue that we've had forever with the ability of multiple users being in the same document at the same time, applying various filters & hiding columns. Here are my questions I have, can you help answer them?

I have a file that we're wanting to utilize the Microsoft Excel Sheet View for and I have multiple questions on this. 


Background : I have a file that we will need to have multiple users in the file at the same time making updates. In their updates, each user will need to be able to filter the data, hide columns, add columns, add formulas, add macros, make changes, etc. I want to set it up where I have a Master View, then the users have their own view. 

  1. I want a master view to be able to see everything added to the file, do I use the Default View for this? 
  2. We've found with individual views, we can filter in each view without messing with another user's view. However, if a user in View A hides a column, it also hides the column in View B as well as the Default . Is there a way to prevent this?
  3. The Link settings that allows for sharing a link but restricting access for the person it is shared with, how does this work? We would like to be able to share a link with a person for so many days, then that link would expire. Is this possible?
  4. I have one user that can only see the "editing view" and is not able to create new views. How do I change this? 

 

Thanks!

Amanda

Copper Contributor

I second the comment made by @LeeASmith. Why can you not use Sheet View when the file shared with you is 'view only'? Google Sheets lets you create a temporary filter view even if you have only read rights to the file. Does this mean I have to download the file each time I want to filter some data? 

Iron Contributor

Has this replaced the feature that appeared a month or so ago then, whereby when filtering it asked if it was for all users or just you?

 

That was a really simple and useful feature to have for the users as this is more long winded.

Copper Contributor

@Avani_Reddy Thanks for the new feature. This is very useful. Is there a plan to roll this out on the desktop version as well? We use some features that are not available on Excel Online such as power query. Also in the past I've run up against the file size limitation of excel online along with other feature limitations. Private views while sharing edit sessions in desktop would solve many problems for us.  As it is now we need to use excel online for some workflows and desktop for others. This causes confusion among the staff. 

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