MVP #72: Six New Functions In Excel and One New Chart Type

Good news!
Microsoft has added 6 new functions to Microsoft Excel and they are not functions that you might never find use for but functions that people have been asking for. In fact, I am already seeing the numerous ways they are going to make my Excel-ling life better.

CONCAT
Two complaints I hear people make a lot about CONCATENATE (the Excel function that lets you join the values/texts in different cells) are that why is the name that long? and can't we select a range?

Now Microsoft has nifty fixed those two issues in one cool function: CONCAT

CONCAT is short to write and allows you join entries selected as a range.

TEXTJOIN
This takes CONCAT to a new level. So what if you want to put a comma and a space between the names as you are joining them? That is what TEXTJOIN enables you to do.

IFS
The formula that gets most people confused the most in Excel is nested IF. People find it hard to process the numerous brackets and IF statements that characterize a nested IF function. Now there's some relief. Excel has introduced IFS to help combat the strain of untangling brackets.

If you have a report and need to grade the performance with some conditions like we do for school marks to grades, then IFS is your new friend.

SWITCH
So what if you want to pass a comment on the grade performance? You want to say grade A means Excellent, grade B means Very Good, ... Well, that is what SWITCH allows you to do. It was borrowed from the programming community.

MAXIFS
And there is also MAXIFS to let you do want you've been doing with SUMIFS and COUNTIFS, just this time you are picking the highest value that meets your criteria.

MINIFS
And this is the sixth and last: MINIFS. You've guessed right! It does similar stuff as MAXIFS but returns the minimum value that meets your criteria.

Black Theme
Office (Excel inclusive) now has a black theme.

And there's also added to the chart family, a funnel chart.