Microsoft 365 Developer Platform Ideas

Access to Equations via Word JavaScript API

Jakob76 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:09:16 GMT

Currently, the Word JavaScript API does not provide access to equations (built using Word’s equation editor / Office Math). This limits the ability to programmatically interact with structured mathematical content in documents.

It would be highly valuable if the API allowed developers to:

Enumerate equations within a document or range
Access the underlying equation structure or markup (e.g., Office Math / OMML)
Read and modify equation content
Convert equations to a linear or plain-text representation

Providing access to equations would significantly improve document automation, analysis, and interoperability with other systems that rely on mathematical content.

Thank you for considering this enhancement.

Add Workbook.calculate() to avoid recalculating all open workbooks

stephanecoze — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:43:11 GMT

Today, the Office.js API exposes Excel.Application.calculate(calculationType), but it recalculates all currently opened workbooks in Excel. This becomes a performance and UX problem when users have multiple large workbooks open and an add-in needs to trigger calculation only for the workbook it’s running in.

Request: Please add a workbook-scoped calculate API that recalculates only the active workbook, while reusing the existing Excel.CalculationType enum (recalculate, full, fullRebuild).

Example API shape (one option):

await Excel.run(async (context) => {

context.workbook.calculate(Excel.CalculationType.recalculate);

await context.sync();

});

This would preserve the current semantics of Excel.CalculationType while avoiding unintended recalculation of unrelated open workbooks (the current Application.calculate behavior).

Preserve Add-in signature HTML on Outlook for iOS across all clients

dsantaras — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:36:12 GMT

Summary

When an Office Add-in inserts HTML into a message on Outlook for iOS (for example, an email signature), Outlook for iOS rewrites the inline CSS at the point the content is added to the message body. The rewritten CSS uses modern shorthand and the currentcolor keyword, which classic Outlook on Windows (the Word based rendering engine) does not render correctly. The result is that recipients opening the message in classic Outlook on Windows see missing or incorrect styling, most visibly missing border colors on signature elements.

The same message renders correctly when opened in Outlook on the web, new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for iOS, and Outlook for Android. Only classic Outlook on Windows is affected, because only the Word rendering engine fails to interpret the rewritten CSS.

Who this affects

Any organisation using a third party signature Add-in (or any Add-in that injects styled HTML) on Outlook for iOS, whose recipients include users of classic Outlook on Windows. This is a large population: classic Outlook on Windows is still the default client in many enterprises.

We are raising this on behalf of a significant number of affected customers who currently have no workaround.

What we observed

We insert this HTML into the message via the Add-in:

Outlook for iOS rewrites it, before it is committed to the message body, to:

Two behaviours are problematic:

The individual border-top, border-right, border-bottom, border-left declarations are merged into border-width, border-style, and border-color shorthand.
The merged border-color uses the currentcolor keyword for the three unset sides.

Classic Outlook on Windows does not honor currentcolor reliably in this context, and its handling of this particular shorthand combination drops or miscalculates the actual colored side. The colored border the sender intended is not displayed to the recipient.

Why this is a problem specifically for Add-ins

Authors of Office Add-ins cannot control what the host client does to HTML after body.setSignatureAsync, body.setAsync, or equivalent insertion APIs are called. The HTML we provide is valid, and it renders correctly on every other Outlook surface. The rewrite is happening inside Outlook for iOS, silently, and we have no API to opt out of it.

Reproduction

Build a simple Outlook Add-in that inserts the HTML snippet above into a new mail message using the standard Office JS body insertion APIs.
Send the message from Outlook for iOS (tested on iOS 18.3.2, Outlook for iOS 4.2513.1).
Open the sent item in Outlook on the web or Outlook for iOS: the yellow left border renders correctly.
Open the sent item in classic Outlook on Windows: the left border color is missing.

Prior report

This was previously reported against Office JS on GitHub: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js/issues/6521. The response was that the issue will not be fixed in the short term, and the recommendation was to raise a Tech Community item so the team can gauge demand. That is what this post is for.

What we are asking for

Ideally one of the following:

Stop Outlook for iOS rewriting inline CSS that was supplied by an Add-in through the supported insertion APIs. Pass the author's HTML through unchanged, or
If normalisation has to happen, avoid emitting currentcolor and avoid collapsing per side border properties into shorthand in ways that known Outlook rendering engines cannot interpret, or
Publish a documented, supported HTML and CSS subset that is guaranteed to round trip across all Outlook clients (including the Word rendering engine in classic Outlook on Windows), so Add-in authors can target it deliberately.

A way to get the character of bullet points in PowerPoint

Artur_Hellmann — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 01:42:15 GMT

The BulletFormat got updated, which is nice, but there is one disatvantage still:

When resetting a text of a shape completely, and the shape prior to the change, had squares as bullet points, the bullet points in the new text are set as disks.

So there are multiple ways to fix this, the last one is the optimal way that should be implemented:

The shape should have some "default" and keep the last bulletpoints that were set for each level
When setting bullet points, the shapes placeholder settings are used for this

Or the only right solution:
There should be a way to read the current type (square, circle, arrow, whatever) from the textRange.paragraphFormat.bulletFormat so we can save it and reapply the right type to the new text.

Skip Undo Entries for silent Actions of Addins

joerg-sap — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:03:14 GMT

Would it be possible to implement a Excel.run option to hide undo entries e.g supressUndoEntry?
Would be very helpful to set only wanted steps.

E.g users adds a table => refreshes => only one undo entry for resetting it.
I know we can group it but only in a single excel run not when using multiple.

i also like the idea of

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/idea/microsoft365developerplatform/add-ability-to-label-the-actions-office-js-takes-on-the-document-in-the-undo-lis/4491484
for giving it atleast good names.

Ability to dynamically change ribbon button at runtime

schoong — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:15:28 GMT

Our ribbon button actions are awkward! We need the ability to interact with them more dynamically at runtime. Ideas:

Change Office.Ribbon.RequestUpdate() so that it can change a ribbon button's label at runtime, like the "Protect Sheet"/"Unprotect Sheet" button in the Review tab.
Give us the option to create toggle buttons in the manifest and in contextual tabs, like Excel's native "Filter" button in the Data tab, or the "Bold" button.
Change Office.Ribbon.RequestUpdate() so that it can remove a ribbon button, or change its icon, at runtime

Ability to disable Copilot Agent / Edit functionality on a sheet + Copilot events

PurpleMacha25 — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 23:38:18 GMT

We developed an Excel addon which intercepts certain Excel events - sorting of Excel tables, editing cells, etc. on special add-on managed sheets.

This functionality is broken when Copilot Agent/Edit starts modifying the sheet.

Would it be possible to disable Copilot Agent/Edit mode on particular sheets in full and to provide rich API to intercept Copilot's actions?

Ability to determine which cells are currently being viewed by the user

jcofds — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:16:33 GMT

Summary
We did tests on the frontend with our streaming formulas and we were able to confirm that having multiple streaming cells can lead to performance issues on the frontend i.e. unresponsive / glitchy user interface. This can also possibly result to the updating of values slower than the expected rate.

Why This Matters
Our users are expected to work on large spreadsheets containing more than 50,000 streaming cells (potentially more for some users)
Having the capability to determine which cells are viewed by the users will open the possibilities for us to optimize the streaming values. We can make changes to our add-in wherein only the cells being viewed by the users are automatically updated instead of everything.

Proposed Change/s

Add capability to determine which cells are being viewed by the user

Benefits
Having this capability will prevent the scenario wherein the frontend will be not as responsive when dealing with multiple streaming values

Feature Request - Add intent‑based flow creation and context‑aware suggested actions.

SajedaSultana — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 05:33:38 GMT

I would like to suggest a more guided, intent‑driven experience when building flows in Power Automate. When a user starts a new automation, the designer could first prompt them to describe in natural language what they want to accomplish, then automatically propose an appropriate starter flow, trigger, and key actions based on that intent. At each subsequent step, instead of primarily listing all possible actions and connectors, the interface could provide a prominent “Suggested actions” section that is context‑aware and continuously updated according to the user’s goal and existing steps in the flow, similar to intelligent code suggestions in modern editors. This would accelerate flow creation, reduce the learning curve for new users, and help experienced users quickly discover the most relevant actions without manually searching through long action lists.

Get selected chart element in Excel JS API

schoong — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:22:21 GMT

We need to read the data point when a user clicks on one of the parts of a bar chart or pie chart. Something like getSelectedChartElement() that points to the underlying cell range where the data point resides. Or a Chart event whenever a chart element is selected.

Copilot prompt amount information in Graph API

florisklaver — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 07:24:31 GMT

Can we include the number of prompts submitted by users with an M365 Copilot license through the Graph API? And split these out in where the prompts were submitted (Teams, Word, Excel, Chat, etc)?

This is a better marker than the usage activity date that we can currently work with. This shouldn't be too difficult as in the M365 Admin Center you already provide this information in the usage details.

Hope this is an easy inclusion as using the AI API is not recommended as it gives too much details about prompts for certain third party implementations.

SmartAlerts - provide a hook to get back into addins code after 'don't send'

girtsegr — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:17:00 GMT

When addin takes a while to process mail item, and user selects don't send option on soft block dialog, it would be useful to have a way to hook back into addins code. Example - if during that processing time there was any change done to the mail item, such as notifications displayed to user, they will remain visible for the user, even though send is cancelled. This is because it is not possible to clear notifications after this dialog is actioned.

It is not unique to just notifications, it includes any other changes. Essentially, it would be good to have a way to get back into addins code for a clean up. Better user experience.

Current behavior:

User sends mail item that takes a while to process, some notifications are displayed to user that Add-in is processing something, soft block dialog gets displayed, user selects 'Don't send', send process is stopped and mail item is reset back to initial state - no notification is displayed.

Expected behavior:

User sends mail item that takes a while to process, some notifications are displayed to user that addin is processing something, soft block dialog gets displayed, user selects 'Don't send', send process is stopped and mail item is in the same state that addin left it in - notifications are visible.

Our addin processes mail item, shows users notifications of where we are in process. Additionally our addin could change the content on mail item itself. If user can select 'Don't Send', then it would be a desirable to have a way to hook back into Add-ins code, and perform some kind of cleanup, so that there would be no hanging notifications or even changed body of the mail item.

Support for user tracking with insertfilefrombase64

praharshithakv — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 07:04:06 GMT

We work in the Compliance space, that requires us to track users who made changes to a document. We also have an Add-in that utilizes insertfilefrombase64 method to insert/replace content in our documents. When we use this method, the user is getting tracked as "Unknown" thus failing to track the user who made such changes. Requesting that this be changed and updated to track the user. If the same was done manually, the change is reflected against the user.

a relevant bug was raised which was marked as an dev enhancement request by the team.

https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-js/issues/5472

Gracefully handle unavailability of Office.js

kwro — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:47:29 GMT

The reliance on Office.js (and its dependencies) delivered from the network proves to be challenging in some scenarios. While ideally the platform would support full offline use, I'm hopeful that there are some incremental improvements that could be made to address some of our challenges in the shorter term.

As an example, our add-in hooks into Outlook's OnMessageSend, which inherently puts it on the critical path of the user experience when sending emails. In scenarios where the user's network is slow or unreliable, or in an event of an Azure CDN outage that makes Office.js unavailable or slow to be delivered, the user experiences a long wait while Office.js is loaded on message send. I should highlight that Outlook attributes this delay to the add-in: "Add-in X is taking longer than expected". I'd like to propose that the platform gives the add-in more control over the user experience in these cases.

What this would look like for our OnMessageSend add-in is that the add-in would execute some code outside of the event handler (before Office.js finishes loading) to start a timer, and if the loading phase exceeds a timeout value defined in the add-in code then the add-in would instruct Outlook to conclude the processing of the event (similarly to how event.completed() is invoked inside an event handler). That last part would require some interface with Outlook that is available even if Office.js hasn't been fully loaded.

Feature Request for Enhanced Outlook Add-in Surfaces

GovardhanM — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 15:32:40 GMT

Feature Request for Enhanced Outlook Add-in Surfaces

Request Title: Expandable/Pop-out Outlook Add-ins with Inline Compose/Reply Integration

Products/Platforms: Microsoft Outlook Add-ins (Office.js) across Classic Outlook for Windows, New Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook on the web (OWA)
Request Type: New extensibility capabilities / UI host surfaces for Outlook add-ins
Priority: High (end-user productivity + adoption + enterprise usability)

Background

We use an Outlook add-in to integrate additional productivity tools into the email workflow to help users save time, reduce context switching, and improve execution quality. This is a core enablement pattern for enterprise users who spend significant time in Outlook.

Today, our add-in runs primarily in the task pane, which has notable limitations in flexibility and available space. The current experience is increasingly cluttered and not user-friendly, especially for workflows that require richer UI, multiple steps, or contextual data.

Additionally, the add-in is not seamlessly integrated into the new message compose and reply experience (i.e., the workflow is not inline with the compose/reply window), which limits usability for scenarios that must occur at the moment a user is authoring a message.

Problem Statement

Current task pane constraints lead to:

Limited UI real estate (narrow layout, heavy scrolling, cramped forms, poor readability)
No user-friendly expand/enlarge options to fit different workflows and screen sizes
Reduced usability during compose/reply, where users need the tool inline with message authoring
Lower adoption and productivity because the add-in experience feels disconnected and cumbersome

In practice, users need more space and tighter integration at the exact point of work (compose/reply), without leaving Outlook or juggling multiple windows.

Requested Features

We request Microsoft to support the following add-in UI capabilities, ideally consistently across Classic Windows, New Outlook, and OWA:

A) Expandable / Resizable Task Pane

Allow users to resize/expand the add-in pane (wider layout; optional full-height behavior)
Support a compact vs expanded mode with user preference persistence

Outcome: Richer workflows become usable without redesigning into cramped layouts.

B) Pop-out Add-in Experience

Provide a supported pop-out window for the add-in (while maintaining context to the current item)
Ensure pop-out works smoothly with enterprise policies and does not break the add-in lifecycle

Outcome: Users can work with complex UI without sacrificing mail reading/authoring space.

C) Inline Add-in Integration with Compose and Reply

Enable add-in UI to appear inline within the compose/reply window (not just as a separate side pane)
Support contextual actions/data entry during authoring (e.g., insert content, validate, attach artifacts, update records)
Ensure consistent behavior for new compose and reply experiences

Outcome: The tool is available at the moment users need it while writing responses, driving adoption and reducing errors.

D) Add-in as a Mail Tab

Provide a supported extension point for an add-in to appear as a tab in Mail, similar to “Focused/Other”
Tab hosts a larger workspace for add-in workflows (e.g., triage/queue/workbench views)

Outcome: A first-class workspace in Mail for workflows that don’t fit the task pane model.

Key Enterprise Use Cases

Multi-step workflows triggered from emails (triage, intake, approvals, routing)
Rich forms and guided actions that are impractical in a narrow pane
Compose/reply-time actions: insert approved templates/snippets, validate recipients/content, capture metadata, create/update tasks/records
Dedicated mail workbench views via a tab for operational roles

Acceptance Criteria

Cross-client consistency: Classic Windows, New Outlook, and OWA supported with minimal divergence

Next Steps for Microsoft

Confirm roadmap/feasibility for: expandable task pane, add-in pop-out, inline compose/reply surface, and mail tab surface
Provide recommended implementation model/APIs and opportunities for preview/early access for enterprise validation

Screenshots for Reference

From New Outlook (client) launch URL in system browser

_Mor10_ — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 11:48:00 GMT

From an Outlook Addin running in New Outlook (client) we need to be able to open a third party website in the system browser. This is currently only possible on New Outlook on web. Only method currently available is to open a dialog, but the third party site does not fit very well there.

I am rewriting an old VSTO addin to be able to run in New Outlook. The addin opens a third party web site that I do not control. I need to be able to replicate the behavior of the VSTO addin which calls ShellExecute WIN32 API to handle the URL.

Support uploads larger than 250 MB in SharePoint / Microsoft Graph APIs

Stev001 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 12:21:46 GMT

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Summary
SharePoint ingestion scenarios that rely on Microsoft Graph or SharePoint APIs are effectively constrained by a ~250 MB upload limit. This limitation blocks common enterprise workflows that depend on automated, API‑based ingestion of large files.

Problem
Many real‑world enterprise artifacts routinely exceed 250 MB, including (but not limited to):

PST and mailbox exports
Teams and SharePoint exports
eDiscovery and compliance evidence
Forensic artifacts and archives

When using SharePoint / Microsoft Graph APIs, these files cannot be ingested without artificial file splitting or unsupported workarounds.

Impact
This limitation:

Breaks automated and headless ingestion workflows
Forces manual or error‑prone file segmentation
Increases operational complexity and risk
Prevents adoption of API‑first architectures
Is misaligned with modern Microsoft 365 data sizes and enterprise use cases

Expected Behavior
SharePoint and Microsoft Graph upload APIs should support large‑file ingestion through one or more supported approaches, such as:

Higher or configurable upload size limits
Fully supported chunked or multipart uploads
Storage‑backed ingestion patterns consistent with DriveItem upload sessions

Why This Matters
This is not an edge case. Large‑file ingestion is a standard enterprise requirement across compliance, investigation, migration, and archival scenarios. The current 250 MB limit significantly reduces the viability of SharePoint APIs for these workloads.

Request
Increase or remove the 250 MB upload limit for SharePoint / Microsoft Graph upload APIs, or provide a supported large‑file ingestion mechanism suitable for enterprise‑scale workloads.

Calendar meeting template using Office JS API

JTSRO — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 05:11:41 GMT

We have a requirement to use an organisation-wide new meeting template. It needs to operate across Outlook New, Outlook Web, and Outlook Classic.

Using a web add in, it would be great to have an event trigger along the lines of OnEventCreated or OnItemCreated where we can populate the calendar body with pre-formatted HTML. We would like to avoid user interaction (i.e. clicking the ribbon), and do not want to manage templates installed or configured on each device.

Ideally, deployment would be via M365 Admin Center targeting specific Entra OUs.

Ability to save settings in Excel workbook without clearing Undo stack

schoong — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:23:30 GMT

Both the Office API `Office.context.document.settings.saveAsync()` and the Excel API `context.workbook.settings.add(key, value)` clear the undo stack when called.

Undo is very important for editing data in Excel
The Excel JS API documentation says that undo is supported, but we have to tell our users that this is not true because the settings in the workbook cannot be saved without clearing undo.

One of the following needs to happen:

When `Office.context.document.settings.saveAsync()` is called, undo should not be disabled
Or the newer Excel JS API's `context.workbook.settings.add()` should not disable undo

3. Or provide a `workbook.onSave` event, so that we can call settings.saveAsync() only when the workbook is saved. That may somewhat mitigate the damage by reducing the number of times that Undo. In our current implementation, it is constantly clearing the Undo stack, so putting it in a workbook `onSave` event would actually help a little with or without AutoSave on.

Add ability to label the actions office-js takes on the document in the Undo list

JKPieterse — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:21:33 GMT

Actions performed on a document are added to the application Undo stack. However, the description of the action that you can undo is the same for all actions. Here is a screen shot of Excel after my add-in has altered some elements of an Excel file:

It would be really useful if we could set the label prior to the next context.sync, e.g.:

Excel.setUndoLabel("Changed foo into bar");

Of course the label needs to fall back to default after the context.sync() statement.

Microsoft 365 Developer Platform Ideas

Access to Equations via Word JavaScript API

Add Workbook.calculate() to avoid recalculating all open workbooks

Preserve Add-in signature HTML on Outlook for iOS across all clients

A way to get the character of bullet points in PowerPoint

Skip Undo Entries for silent Actions of Addins

Ability to dynamically change ribbon button at runtime

Ability to disable Copilot Agent / Edit functionality on a sheet + Copilot events

Ability to determine which cells are currently being viewed by the user

Feature Request - Add intent‑based flow creation and context‑aware suggested actions.

Get selected chart element in Excel JS API

Copilot prompt amount information in Graph API

SmartAlerts - provide a hook to get back into addins code after 'don't send'

Support for user tracking with insertfilefrombase64

Gracefully handle unavailability of Office.js

Feature Request for Enhanced Outlook Add-in Surfaces

Feature Request for Enhanced Outlook Add-in Surfaces

Background

Problem Statement

Requested Features

A) Expandable / Resizable Task Pane

B) Pop-out Add-in Experience

C) Inline Add-in Integration with Compose and Reply

D) Add-in as a Mail Tab

Key Enterprise Use Cases

Acceptance Criteria

Next Steps for Microsoft

Screenshots for Reference

From New Outlook (client) launch URL in system browser

Support uploads larger than 250 MB in SharePoint / Microsoft Graph APIs

Calendar meeting template using Office JS API

Ability to save settings in Excel workbook without clearing Undo stack

Add ability to label the actions office-js takes on the document in the Undo list

Support uploads larger than 250 MB in SharePoint / Microsoft Graph APIs