Microsoft is Bringing Dark Mode to Mobile and the Web

Microsoft’s monthly round-up of new Microsoft 365 functionality across desktop, mobile, and web is now available.

“This month, we’re rolling out improvements to help you build a more productive, collaborative, and secure work environment for you and your organization,” Microsoft corporate vice president Jarod Spataro writes in a new post to the Microsoft 365 Blog. “The new XLOOKUP formula for Excel helps you find data and improve calculation time. OneNote and Yammer mobile updates help you work on the go and find the answers you need more quickly. And the new FastTrack guidance will help ensure seamless Windows 10 migrations.”

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You can find the complete list of improvements in the original post, but here’s a quick rundown of the top improvements and changes.

Find and retrieve data quickly in Excel. Microsoft is bringing XLOOKUP, the successor to the VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP formulas, to Excel. XLOOKUP addresses the most common user feedback and takes advantage of recent backend changes to improve calculation time. It‘s available today to Office Insiders, with general availability coming later this year, Microsoft says.

Create work-in-progress diagrams and slides in PowerPoint (and Word and Excel). A new Office style called Sketched Shapes helps you transform standard shapes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel into rough outlines that look hand-drawn and convey a sense of in-progress work. “Sketched Shapes is perfect for building wireframes, drafting designs, or adding an artistic touch,” Spataro notes. “You can also easily move between sketched and standard shapes.” Sketched Shapes is rolling out to Windows Insiders and Office Insiders for Mac.

Subscript, Superscript, and Change Case in PowerPoint for web. To date, users needed the PowerPoint desktop application to add subscript, superscript, or change text casing in their slides. Now, you can do so on PowerPoint for the web as well.

Add shapes, graphs, and Outlook meeting details in OneNote for iPad. Now, you can insert shapes in OneNote for iPad, including straight lines, basic shapes, and graphs, using the Draw tab. You can also add Outlook meeting details to OneNote for iPad and OneNote for Mac.

Annotate your notes using ink in OneNote for iPhone. OneNote for iPhone now supports ink so you can use your finger or a stylus to annotate with the natural feel of ink on the go.

Dark Mode. As noted in Microsoft is Bringing Dark Mode to Mobile and the Web, Microsoft is, um, bringing Dark Mode to mobile and the web

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Conversation 12 comments

  • earlster

    Premium Member
    28 August, 2019 - 5:21 pm

    <p>Are you sure you meant to re-use the title from your previous post?</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    28 August, 2019 - 6:35 pm

    <p>XLOOKUP(a,b,c) is MSFT's answer to the idiom INDEX(c,MATCH(a,b,0)) which has been in common use for about 3 decades. Apparently adding an optional 4th argument to LOOKUP (similar to VLOOKUP's and HLOOKUP's 4th argument) was too much work. FWIW, it's been nearly a year since MSFT introduced a number of functions originally found in Google Sheets, e.g., FILTER, which are only found in Office Insider versions. Either the Office Insider program is crap (perhaps not unlikely), or there's a helluva lot of resistance to admitting tacitly that Google got some things right way before MSFT did.</p><p>IOW, new functions appearing in Excel is little to get excited about. Most of them have been noted for their lack for decades.</p>

  • jeff.bane

    28 August, 2019 - 6:47 pm

    <p>Darkmode – the new blockchain. </p>

  • MikeGalos

    28 August, 2019 - 10:09 pm

    <p>A headline so nice they had to use it twice.</p><p>Shame this article, which had a lot of content that wasn't about dark mode got labeled with a deceptive headline that made it look like a duplication of the previous post.</p>

    • dontbeevil

      29 August, 2019 - 3:47 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#452650">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>glad they're increasing the dark mode support, they're already ahead of google, also on the web</p><p><br></p>

    • sespumapsi

      23 September, 2019 - 6:29 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#452650">In reply to MikeGalos:</a></em></blockquote><p>alright</p>

  • mmcpher

    Premium Member
    28 August, 2019 - 11:07 pm

    <p>It does seem to be a very bright kind of darkness. </p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    29 August, 2019 - 4:10 am

    <p>Why headline on probably the least interesting change?</p><p><br></p><p>XLOOKUP is a huge and long awaited change. Finally not having to sort data and being able to return multiple columns in one go.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      29 August, 2019 - 11:16 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#452673">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>I agree. This is a good addition to Excel. I just wonder how long it's going to take to get to the general release so I can actually use it.</p>

    • SvenJ

      29 August, 2019 - 1:35 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#452673"><em>In reply to wright_is:</em></a><em> </em>Paul likes Dark Mode</blockquote><p><br></p>

    • hrlngrv

      Premium Member
      29 August, 2019 - 2:40 pm

      <p><a href="https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/microsoft-365/213234/microsoft-is-bringing-dark-mode-to-mobile-and-the-web-2#452673&quot; target="_blank"><em>In reply to wright_is:</em></a></p><blockquote>Finally not having to sort data and being able to return multiple columns in one go.</blockquote><p>Evidently you don't follow Excel user-to-user support forums.</p><p>=INDEX(B3:D22,MATCH("whatever",A3:A22,0),0)</p><p>has produced the equivalent of</p><p>=XLOOKUP("whatever",A3:A22,B3:D22)</p><p>for decades. Granted one function call is better than 2. Though, as a matter of opinion, Google Sheets's FILTER function would be even better, with</p><p>=FILTER(B3:D22,A3:A22="whatever")</p><p>producing multiple rows in addition to multiple columns, thus =INDEX(FILTER(…),1,0) producing exactly the same results as the 1st 2 formulas, and =INDEX(FILTER(…),2,0) producing a result Excel's XLOOKUP still can't produce. FWIW, one of the Office Insider versions includes a FILTER function based on Google's function, but after 11 months of testing MSFT still isn't willing to bring it Prime Time. I figure the delay is due mostly to bruised egos within MSFT that Google came up with any good ideas.</p>

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