Where's my new feature? What do you mean it's not on my Channel yet?

Life used to be so predictable and simple.

Every 3 years or so we'd get a fantastic new set of features in Excel and we'd moan about the ribbon changing or the short cut icons moving and eventually we'd get used to it and find it better than before.

We knew that some things probably wouldn't work in older versions of Excel. If I do something new and fancy in Excel 2016 there's a good chance it won't work in Excel 2010 etc.

Things have changed

We're now in a world of Office 365

With Office 365 we get continual updates of new features.

No more waiting 3 years! Hurray!

This is fantastic as Excel needs keep up with the rapid developments in technology and the Excel Team are doing an awesome job.

BUT

If you're on Office 365 and using Excel, the person down the road may have cool new features but you don't ??? But you're both on Office 365? What gives?

You see a new feature posted online and you think great, I'll try that out, but it's not there. You click check for updates? Nothing?

We're now in a world of Channels, and it's pretty confusing.

Here's my diagram to try and help

The insider channel is for those people brave enough to get the potentially quite buggy version of Excel. This is where the new features first materialise. And its where people (like me) who flag this stuff as "coming soon" are getting access to these things.

To add a little extra confusion this is actually split into 2 tracks :

• Insider (earliest build, referred to as Fast)
• Monthly Targeted (referred to as insider slow) which is a few weeks behind Fast.

To really get you pulling your hair out, not all Insiders get new features released at the same time, it's a staggered "luck of the draw" release so the Excel team can have a "control" group when new features are being trialled.

After a whole bunch of testing and feedback (weeks to months to a year), at some point this new feature will be released to the.....

monthly channel which is for those that are keen to get these updates, with a bit of "buggyness" risk attached.

Then (depending on when the feature is released on the monthly channel) it will flow through to those on the Semi Annual (Targeted) channel (always updated in September and March with the features from the Monthly Channel at that time).

and finally, for us safety conscious, happy to wait, folk there's the Semi Annual channel, which will receive the September Targeted channel updates the following January, or the March Targeted update in June.

The Impact

As you can see from the chart if an update hits the insider channel in May then it won't hit the Semi Annual channel until January of next year!

By DEFAULT Office 365 is set on the Slowest Channel i.e Semi Annual

More information

To check your channel open Excel and go to File > Account and it will tell you there

Note that I'm on the semi-annual channel and have the August 2017 update (1708). I won't get my next update until July which will contain the 1803 update that is currently available in the "semi-annual targeted" channel.

Does your head hurt yet?

More info.......

Becoming an office insider

Detailed Breakdown of channels

Office 365 release notes

How do I pick my channel?

For organisations...

For personal users....

Hope that helps

Wyn

www.accessanalytic.com.au/blog