We're excited to share with you the latest improvements to the Analyze Data feature, which make it easy to get better answers to your data questions using natural language queries in Excel for Windows, Mac, and the web.
Thanks to previous feature updates, you have been able to use natural language to ask data questions in Excel—such as “What percentage of my sales come from the Northwest region?” or “Show me revenue over time as a line chart”—for a while now. (Note that this feature was formerly known as Ideas.)
With these latest improvements, you are now able to:
- Ask questions about specific patterns or insights that might be present in your data, such as “Are there any trends?” or “Show me insights about the Northwest region.”
- Clarify your intent when there is ambiguity. For instance, if you ask for “sales by region,” Excel now gives you the default answer (“Total Sales by Region”) as well as other options (such as “Average Sales by Region”).
- Take advantage of the latest developments in natural language processing technologies, which increase answer accuracy. For example, if you ask, “What’s the account with the highest sales total for each department?” Excel can provide the answer, even if your table headers don’t match the wording exactly (such as using “AcctNum” for “account”).
- Pick from a few suggested alternative questions when Excel is unable to answer your question (when the query is too short, for example).