Microsoft and Google are taking distinctive approaches with AI agents in their productivity suites, and enterprises need to account for the differences when formulating digital labor strategies, analysts said.

In recent months, both companies have announced a dizzying array of new agents aimed at extracting value from corporate documents and maximizing efficiency. The tech giants have dropped numerous hints about where they’re headed with AI agents in their respective office suites, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Microsoft is reshaping its Copilot assistant as a series of tools to create, tap into, and act on insights at individual and organizational levels. The Microsoft 365 roadmap lists hundreds of specialized AI tools under development to automate work for functions such as HR and accounting. The company is also developing smaller AI models to carry out specific functions.

Google is going the opposite way, with its large-language model Gemini at the heart of Workspace. Google offers tools that include Gems for workers to create simple custom agents that automate tasks such as customer service, and Agentspace in Google Cloud to build more complex custom agents for collaboration and workflow management. At the recent Google I/O developer conference, the company added real-time speech translation to Google Meet.

“For both, the goal is to bring usable and practical productivity and efficiency capabilities to work tools,” said Liz Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research.

But the differing AI agent strategies are heavily rooted in each company’s philosophical approaches to productivity. Although Microsoft has long encouraged customers to move from its traditional “perpetual-license” Office suite to the Microsoft 365 subscription-based model, M365 notably retains the familiar desktop apps. Google Workspace, on the other hand, has always been cloud-based.

Microsoft users are typically a bit more tethered to traditional enterprise work styles, while Google has always been the “cloud-first darling for smaller organizations that still crave real-time collaboration,” Miller said.

When it comes to the generative AI models being integrated into the two office suites, “Google’s Gemini models are beating out the models being deployed by Microsoft,” Miller said. “But as Microsoft expands its model ‘inventory’ in use across M365, this could change.”

Microsoft has an advantage, as many desktop users live in Outlook or Word. The intelligence Copilot can bring from CRM software is readily available, while that integration is more complex in the cloud-native Google Workspace.

“Microsoft still has an edge in a foundational understanding of work and the capacity to extend Copilot connections across applications as expansive as the Office suite through to Dynamics, giving AI a greater opportunity to be present in the spaces and presentation layers where workers enjoy working,” Miller said.

Microsoft’s Copilot Agents and Google’s Gems and Agentspace are in their early stages, but there have been positive developments, said J.P. Gownder, a vice president and principal analyst on Forrester’s Future of Work team.

Microsoft recently adopted Google’s A2A protocol, which makes it easier for users of both productivity suites to collaborate and unlock value from stagnant data sitting on other platforms. “That should be a win for interoperability,” Gownder said.

But most companies that are Microsoft shops have years or decades of digital assets that hold them back from considering Google, he said. For example, Excel macros, pivot tables, and customizations cannot be easily or automatically migrated to Google Sheets, he said.

“As early as this market is, I don’t think it’s fair to rank either player — Microsoft or Google — as being the leader; both of them are constructing new ecosystems to support the growth of agentic AI,” Gownder said.

Most Microsoft Office users have moved to M365, but AI is helping Google is making inroads into larger organizations, especially among enterprises that are newer and less oriented toward legacy Microsoft products, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

Technologies like A2A blur the line between on-premises and cloud productivity. As a result, “Google Workspace is no longer perceived as inferior, as it had been in the past,” Gold said.

And for budget-constrained enterprises, the value of AI agent features is not the only consideration. “There is also the cost equation at work here, as Google seems to have a much more transparent cost structure than Microsoft with all of its user classes and discounts,” Gold said.

Microsoft does not include Copilot in its M365 subscriptions, which vary in price depending on the type of customer. The Copilot business subscriptions range from $30 per user per month for M365 Copilot to $200 per month for 25,000 messages for Copilot Studio, which is also available under a pay-as-you-go model. Google has flat subscription pricing for Workspace, starting at $14 per user per month for business plans with Gemini included.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Remote-controlled robots could one day build giant solar farms in space, according to a recent trial in the UK. British startup Space Solar conducted the test at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) facilities on the University of Oxford’s Culham Campus, which hosts several fusion research initiatives. The company used two remotely operated robotic arms to assemble a section of the support structure for its future solar power satellite. The device aims to beam the Sun’s energy from space to Earth.  According to Space Solar, the trial proved that robotics can assemble gigawatt-scale solar power satellites. Sam Adlen, the startup’s…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Siôn Geschwindt Earlier this month, the father of a wealthy cryptocurrency entrepreneur was abducted in Paris while walking his dog. The attackers, wearing balaclavas, forced him into a van, later severing one of his fingers and sending a video of the mutilation to his son alongside a demand for millions of euros in ransom. The incident joined a growing list of violent crimes in France linked to crypto wealth. Victims have included a prominent entrepreneur and his wife who were held hostage, a man doused in petrol, and a child targeted in an attempted abduction. As fear spreads within France’s crypto community,…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Deepti Pathak Mobile Legends is a super popular online battle arena game, where players fight in teams of…
The post Mobile Legends Tier List (May 2025) appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Partner Content Microsoft Outlook, with a POP3 account, stores mailbox items, like emails, attachments, contacts, and tasks in…
The post How to Repair Corrupted Outlook Data File (.pst)? appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

Microsoft is giving its Windows Update software stack more power, and the tool will soon be able to update other software and drivers within Windows systems.

The company is establishing the capability for system administrators to wrangle all software updates into a one-click experience, Microsoft said in a blog post on Wednesday.

Sysadmins today have to run Windows Update to keep the OS updated, and separately patch individual pieces of software, which can be a lot of work.

“To solve this, we’re building a vision for a unified, intelligent update orchestration platform capable of supporting any update (apps, drivers, etc.) to be orchestrated alongside Windows updates,” Microsoft said.

Typically, system administrators deploy patch management tools to update Windows and related enterprise software, but Microsoft wants to bring it all to a Windows Update-style deployment. Potential benefits include more streamlined and lower-cost deployment of updates, the company said. A unified patch management system also reduces computing requirements.

The current process for doing updates to Windows systems is a hodgepodge of different tools and techniques, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

“I applaud Microsoft for finally trying to bring all of this under one umbrella but wonder why it took them so long to do this,” Gold said.

In addition to Windows, Windows Update today updates Microsoft’s development tools such as .NET and Defender, and also updates system drivers. With ARM-based PCs, it also delivers system BIOS and firmware so users don’t have to download it from the PC maker’s website.

But how quickly companies adopt this new way of doing things will depend on how easy Microsoft makes it to adopt the new service, Gold said.

Microsoft is providing a tool for software providers to put their software updates into its orchestration platform. The company has only provided information on how developers can test it out with their applications, and Microsoft will then provide further information.

Developers who have access to the Windows Runtime environment can test it out and implement it. APIs are also available to test out the system.

Microsoft separately announced that Windows Backup for Organizations, a data backup feature announced last year, is now in public preview.

The product will allow for a smooth transition to Windows 11 from Windows 10 for enterprises, the company said. Windows 10 support ends in October 2025.

“This capability helps reduce migration overhead, minimize user disruption, and strengthen device resilience against incidents,” Microsoft wrote in a blog entry.

Microsoft’s Entra identity authentication is a key component of such transitions via Windows Backup for Organizations, Microsoft said.

Further reading:

How to handle Windows 10 and 11 updates

Windows 10: A guide to the updates

Windows 11: A guide to the updates

How to preview and deploy Windows 10 and 11 updates

How to troubleshoot and reset Windows Update

How to keep your apps up to date in Windows 10 and 11

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt The European Commission has unveiled ambitious plans to cut red tape and make the EU a more attractive place for tech businesses to scale.  Launched today, the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy comes as the bloc scrambles to attract and retain tech startups amid stiff competition from the US and Asia.  Under the new initiative, the EU has laid out a five-point plan to close the gap with its rivals. It’s also in talks to deploy a public-private fund of at least €10bn under the new strategy, Reuters reports.  Here’s the lowdown: 1. Making rules less painful European startups regularly…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Meta (Nasdaq:META) is restructuring its AI division into two distinct units, AI Products and AGI Foundations, marking its most significant internal overhaul as it races to compete with OpenAI and Google.

The move, detailed in an internal memo from Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and reported by Axios, appoints Connor Hayes to lead AI product integration while Ahmad Al-Dahle and Amir Frenkel will co-direct long-term AGI research.

The restructuring comes amid mounting crises, including the delayed Llama 4 Behemoth model and the departure of key Llama architects to competitors like Mistral AI. This marks Meta’s second major AI reorganization since CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2023 attempt to “turbocharge” generative AI efforts, which saw the company fall further behind rivals despite early promise.

“Structural changes alone won’t solve Meta’s AI challenges,” said Amandeep Singh, practice director at QKS Group. “While the new AGI Foundations unit creates clarity, retaining elite talent requires a seamless pipeline from research to real-world deployment. Meta has struggled with fragmented pipelines and unclear priorities,” added Singh.

Talent exodus and technical setbacks

The restructuring follows talent losses that have exposed fundamental weaknesses in Meta’s AI strategy. Only three authors remain from the original 14-person Llama research team, according to Business Insider. Internal surveys cited by The Information reveal plummeting morale in Meta’s AI division, where employees cite resource constraints and sluggish progress.

“Talent follows momentum, and right now, momentum lives where research decisions directly shape deployed capabilities,” noted Singh.

This talent drain coincides with technical setbacks, most notably the underperforming Llama 4 model, which has struggled with reasoning and mathematical tasks. These combined challenges have left Meta playing catch-up in the race toward artificial general intelligence, despite its early open-source advantages.

The company’s strategy, bolstered by initiatives such as Llama for Startups and the recent Llama API launch, aims to attract developers and differentiate it from competitors’ proprietary models. But analysts caution these initiatives alone may not be enough to win enterprise trust.

The enterprise adoption dilemma

While Llama’s cost advantages remain attractive to businesses, growing concerns about its governance controls and the looming copyright lawsuit over training data are giving enterprises pause.

“Companies love Llama’s affordability but expanding safety gaps and legal risks are becoming hard to ignore,” Singh said. “For mission-critical applications, many will ultimately choose more reliable, if more expensive, options like GPT or Gemini.”

These cost benefits can lose their appeal when weighed against operational risks. Meta’s reorganization attempts to mitigate these concerns through specialized teams, one deploying generative AI across products, another advancing AGI research, but analysts remain skeptical about whether structural changes alone can solve deeper issues.

Unlike Microsoft’s turnkey OpenAI integration or Google’s enterprise-ready Vertex AI platform, Meta lacks both the sales infrastructure and compliance pedigree for regulated industries. As Singh argued, “Enterprise AI adoption hinges on proven compliance frameworks, operational reliability, and mature support systems. Meta still needs to build that trust at Fortune 500 scale.”

Meta’s race to close the AGI gap

“Meta’s AGI push focused on models with reasoning, multimedia, and voice capabilities aligns with the broader industry trend toward multimodal AI as a catalyst for enterprise transformation,” said Surjyadeb Goswami, research director for AI and Automation at IDC Asia Pacific. He noted that open-source models are critical to enabling cost-effective, transparent, and customizable deployments, especially as organizations deepen their GenAI investments.

For Meta to truly capitalize on this opportunity and succeed in its AGI bid, it must rebuild trust especially for enterprise adoption. Singh highlighted the need for Linux-like community stewardship, OpenAI-level safety protocols, and robust enterprise tooling. “Balancing openness with responsibility is Meta’s real challenge, especially as models approach general-purpose cognitive capability.”

Meta now needs to show this reorganization yields meaningful improvements in model performance, talent retention, and enterprise adoption to validate its new approach. “Meta’s open-source vision is bold, but execution is everything,” Singh concluded.

Source:: Computer World

By Adarsh Verma There are many reasons not to invest in a robot vacuum cleaning system, but surprisingly, for…
The post Finally, a Robot Vacuum with a Little Style and Elegance appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Hisan Kidwai Robux is the official currency of Roblox, which players can earn either by developing games or…
The post Roblox: PLS DONATE Codes (May 2025) appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Siôn Geschwindt Swedish foodtech startup Millow has opened its first commercial-scale factory at a former LEGO production hall in Gothenburg.  The facility will use a patented dry fermentation process in which mycelium — the root-like structure of fungus — feeds on oats in a bioreactor. There, it rapidly grows into a meat alternative that can replace everything from beef mince to doner kebab. Millow aims to produce 500kg of the so-called mycoprotein per day at the site once fully operational later this year. The company’s founders hope its product, also called Millow, will iron out the kinks in the alternative meat sector. …This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Long predicted, the end of the smartphone as we know it now seems to be gradually approaching. The reason: instead of laboriously moving from app to app, artificial intelligence (AI) will enable AI assistants to carry out cross-app tasks in the future, including by voice command.

A look back at the development of user interfaces shows just how significant this step is: While the command line still dominated in the early 1970s, it was gradually replaced by the graphical user interface (GUI) from the 1980s onwards. Touch operation followed in the 2000s and voice input was gradually added. Nevertheless, apps are still silos in which users operate in relative isolation — a situation that is now slowly disappearing with the triumph of generative AI (genAI) and AI agents.

Off to a shaky start

Pioneers in the field of AI devices include the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit r1. These devices broke away from the classic form factor of a smartphone and were primarily operated by voice. But contrary to what the marketing promised, the technology was not ready for practical use and the commands were not well implemented, disappointing both reviewers and users. Although the Rabbit r1 is still available, the more expensive Humane AI Pin was discontinued in early 2025, less than a year after its launch.

The Humane AI Pin lasted less than a year.shutterstock.com – Tada Images

Deutsche Telekom also presented a concept AI phone at MWC 2024, in which the countless apps on a smartphone were to be replaced by an AI-based assistant.

The idea: like a concierge, the AI understands the user’s wishes and then takes care of the details. Instead of searching for a flight to the World Cup quarter-finals in various portals or airline apps, for example, the user should be able to order this simply by voice command via their smartphone. This is at least one scenario that appears to have been borrowed from the connected car sector.

Deutsche Telekom intends to stick with this idea. The company presented an updated version of its AI phone in Barcelona this year and announced that it would be available “at an affordable price” in the second half of the year.

While the unassuming exterior of the Android smartphone has remained the same, Deutsche Telekom’s technology partner has changed. Instead of Natural AI from Brain.ai, a genAI solution from Perplexity (also cloud-based) is now used. The Telekom phone will offer additional AI features in the form of applications from Google Cloud AI (object recognition), Elevenlabs (a podcast generator) and Picsart (a genAI design tool).

srcset=”https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 6000w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=300%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=768%2C432&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&quality=50&strip=all 1024w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&quality=50&strip=all 1536w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=2048%2C1152&quality=50&strip=all 2048w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=1240%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 1240w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=150%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 150w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=854%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 854w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=640%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 640w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/MWC_DT_KI_Phone_Magenta_AI_teleko_16.jpg?resize=444%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 444w” width=”1024″ height=”576″ sizes=”(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px”>Deutsche Telekom’s AI phone relies on a cloud AI solution from Perplexity.Deutsche Telekom

Users can get an impression of how it works with the Perplexity Assistant (not to be confused with the AI-supported search engine), which is freely available as an app. On Android devices, the AI tool is able to open various apps, send messages, reserve tables in restaurants via OpenTable, and translate texts on the screen, among other things.

On the iPhone, the app’s functionality is somewhat limited but can easily outshine Siri when accessing third-party apps. The iOS version of Perplexity also offers a function that the company calls “Persistent Listening.” If this is activated, the voice assistant continues to listen to the user’s voice, even if they leave or switch apps. This is a workaround, as Apple naturally does not allow a “wake-up word” such as “Hey Siri.”

OpenAI and Google are getting involved

In view of the current trend towards AI agents, or agentic AI, similar approaches can also be found among other providers. In January, for example, OpenAI presented Operator, an AI agent that can independently perform a range of repetitive tasks on the web. According to the provider, the agent, which is currently only available in the US (as a preview for Pro users of ChatGPT), can be tasked with a variety of repetitive browser-based tasks, such as filling out forms or ordering food. Operator is powered by OpenAI’s Computer-Using Agent (CUA), an AI model that combines the visual capabilities of GPT-4o with reasoning.

According to OpenAI, CUA is trained to interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in the same way that humans do. This is done with the help of numerous “screenshots” of the website, which are evaluated by the AI in order to initiate the next step. According to the company, this makes the agent flexible enough to carry out digital tasks without using operating system or web-specific APIs.

It’s worth noting, too, that OpenAI is showing strong interest in developing AI devices with its $6.5 billion purchase of io, an AI hardware startup founded by former Apple design wunderkind Jony Ive.

Google is working on the topic of AI assistants in several projects. At its I/O 2025 developer conference, the tech giant demonstrated the latest advances in Project Astra, among other things. The most revolutionary innovation: Astra can now act proactively. Instead of only reacting to direct commands, the assistant continuously observes its surroundings and decides independently when it should intervene.

Project Mariner, which was first presented in December 2024, now comprises a system of agents that can perform up to 10 different tasks simultaneously. Among other things, they are able to look up information, make bookings, and make purchases — all at the same time.

In a demo at I/O, Google showed how a simple command such as “Plan a weekend trip to Berlin” led to a cascade of actions: the agent researched flights, hotels, and activities and presented a complete itinerary, all without further user interaction. As with the other tools, the principle of “Human in the Loop” (HITL) applies to such steps: the agents explain their actions, ask questions when important decisions are made, and can be interrupted by the user at any time.

On-device AI or cloud AI — or both?

While cloud AI promises further AI expansion and — with good connectivity — better performance, hardware manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm are focusing on “on-device AI” to differentiate themselves and create incentives to buy new, high-quality devices.

At the launch of its new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25, Samsung proudly announced that the corresponding features had almost doubled compared to its predecessor. As an example of this, the Korean company cited the ability to activate settings such as dark mode via voice command. And Google’s Gemini assistant can be activated via the function key to use Samsung and Google apps without having to select them individually. Some third-party apps such as Spotify and WhatsApp can also be controlled in this way.

Qualcomm, which provides the necessary AI computing power for high-end smartphones such as the S25 with its Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset (or the Hexagon NPU built into it), is also driving the trend towards on-device AI. The company provides a large number of small language models (SLMs) on its AI Hub. Although the language models are trained in the cloud, inferencing takes place on the device.

And Apple? The iPhone manufacturer is lagging far behind in the field of AI agents, although the original Siri app was already quite advanced in 2014 before Apple bought it and was able to make dinner reservations, find a movie theater, or call a cab. After the death of Steve Jobs, the development team had a hard time convincing software boss Craig Federighi to take AI seriously, Bloomberg reports, citing informed sources and quoting an insider: “When ChatGPT was publicly unveiled in November 2022, Apple Intelligence didn’t even exist as an idea, although it was no secret what OpenAI was doing.”

Apple is now working on “LLM Siri,” but the launch planned for 2025 is still delayed for technical reasons. According to Bloomberg, the biggest problem is that Apple had to split Siri’s infrastructure in half in order to bring the new functions to market as quickly as possible. The old code was used for old functions (such as setting an alarm) and the new code for requests that use personal data. However, this trick caused integration problems that led to delays.

How much personalization is needed?

In order to create context for some tasks, it is of course an advantage if the agents can incorporate personal knowledge about the user, such as gender and age, but also things like location and place of residence or culinary preferences. A classic marketing example is a scenario in which a user wants to eat something on the way home. He asks the AI assistant to find him a restaurant and reserve a table.

When it comes to finding a restaurant that suits the user’s eating habits and is on the route, classic data collectors such as Google have a clear advantage. However, a device such as the smartphone, as a constant companion, is also able to collect a lot of personal data about the user. At the same time, the inhibition threshold for sharing information should not be as high.

Announcements by companies such as OPPO prove that such a personal knowledge graph is not fiction. The smartphone manufacturer recently announced that it is developing a new knowledge system that will serve as a central repository for user data. “The system is designed to learn and adapt from users’ activities, interests, data and memories. This should enable highly personalized AI experiences and thus progress towards a future vision of intelligent, AI-driven operating systems,” the announcement states.

Samsung, for its part, laid the foundation for such a knowledge graph back in 2024 with the acquisition of Oxford Semantic and has now integrated it into its Galaxy S25 family. “RDFox is the technology behind Samsung’s Personal Data Engine, which creates hyper-personalized user experiences while ensuring the privacy and security of data on the device,” Oxford Semantic announced at the launch of the new Samsung flagship. By using knowledge graph technology to integrate and link data, RDFox improves the understanding of how people use a product or service and enables relevant information to be retrieved quickly and recommendations to be made.

Additional considerations

Once such a personal knowledge graph is up and running, the problems are only just beginning: To prevent misuse, it must be stored in a secure enclave in a highly encrypted form. In the case of the Galaxy S25, for example, they are stored in Samsung’s Knox Vault and protected by the blockchain-based Knox Matrix security system.

At the same time, however, numerous other questions arise, some of which still need to be answered, such as:

To what extent is this information passed on when devices are changed? What scenarios are there when switching to the successor model, a model from the same manufacturer, a model with the same operating system or even a different operating system?

Is there a backup in the cloud for migration or loss scenarios?

Do multiple devices — such as a tablet and smartphone — share knowledge?

Is there a cross-device knowledge graph for several agents or several separate ones?

Are there different databases for different personas (e.g., private or professional)?

But more technical aspects also need to be addressed if the AI is constantly listening — such as energy management. One option is to use several AIs: a power-saving AI module waits in the background for commands and then passes them on to other, specialized AIs.

Possible app applications

If the AI agents primarily access functions and services via APIs, this naturally also has consequences for the user interface of apps. “Apps will not become meaningless, but different,” comments the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) on the development in a blog post.

A future-proof software concept must therefore be designed in such a way that it also works when users do not even see the software interface. “The ability to function seamlessly in different contexts and across different interfaces is becoming the decisive factor for success,” Fraunhofer IESE states.

“The challenge and the art of native app development will be to see these developments not as competition, but as an opportunity,” adds Mark Zimmermann, Head of CoE for Mobile Application Development at EnBW. “Successful apps of the future will not only rely on classic UI elements, but will also be intelligently interlinked with AI-controlled systems.”

Mobility expert Mark Zimmermann advises app developers to get to grips with the trend early on. EnBW

According to Zimmermann, the key to success lies in integration: “Customers need to be met where they expect to be — be it through voice interaction, multimodal interfaces, or directly in existing ecosystems. So it’s not about the end of the UI, but about its transformation. Those who get to grips with these technologies early on and integrate them will remain competitive in the long term.”

This article was originally published on Computerwoche.

Source:: Computer World

Apple continues to put forth the proposition that how it runs its App Store is good for customers. The company’s annual App Store fraud analysis puts a number to this benefit, revealing that Apple has prevented over $9 billion in fraudulent transactions at the App Store in the last five years.

Apple’s data comes as the company continues to trudge through ice and fire concerning how it runs the App Store, with payment methods and support for transactions outside its store all being attacked by regulators everywhere. And while the arguments against it gain favor, Apple wants its own arguments heard, countering the sometimes one-sided reportage around its mythical “Apple Tax.”

“In the last five years, the App Store has protected users by preventing over $9 billion in fraudulent transactions, including over $2 billion in 2024 alone, according to Apple’s annual App Store fraud analysis,” Apple said. 

That’s up about 10% over last year, when it prevented over $1.8 billion in fraud.

The cost of vigilance, the price of failure

The cost of security is, they say, eternal vigilance, which is what Apple promises at its stores. Achieving that vigilance takes a big investment, not just of time but also of money to pay people to do the watching. 

To give a sense of scale, Apple told us that 7.7 million apps were submitted to the App Store last year, and of these, 1.9 million were rejected. With Apple’s teams assessing 150,000 app submissions every week, third-party stores logically need to be able to provide the same degree of security oversight to protect their own.

Perhaps one of the more staggering takeaways is the scale at which attempts against the store are being made. Apple says that in the last month, it stopped almost 4.6 million attempts to install or launch illicitly distributed apps. It also blocked more than 10,000 illegitimate apps distributed by what the company calls “pirate storefronts.” 

What threats are users exposed to? 

Apple shares a few, including deceptive apps designed to steal personal information, and fraudulent payment schemes that attempt to exploit users. Some of the other commonly used attack forms Apple says it blocked last year: 

Apps with hidden features and functionality that are only enabled after the app passes App Review. Apple rejected over 43,000 apps for this kind of thing last year. 

More than 320,000 submissions that copied other apps, were spam, or otherwise misled users were rejected.

Risky software disguised as innocuous apps. Apple’s App Review team removed over 17,000 apps for bait-and-switch maneuvers such as these in 2024, the company said.

Apple also rejected 400,000 app submissions for privacy violations.

Of course, the company may have highlighted these attack categories as an oblique way to warn consumers using other stores of the kinds of attacks they may fall victim to.

Payment and ratings fraud

Fans of alternative payment methods to Apple Pay take note: Apple identified nearly 4.7 million stolen credit cards and banned over 1.6 million accounts from transacting again in the last year.

The company also stressed that the way its transaction system works gives customers a lot more privacy and security, as actual card details are never shared online. This of course helps prevent those details being stolen in future database attacks.

As Epic’s Fortnite storms up the App Store charts, it is also interesting that Apple’s report pays particular attention to apps that use insalubrious methods to achieve the same thing.

Apple says it removed more than 143 million fraudulent ratings and reviews from the 1.2 billion posted to the App Store last year as it identified attempts to use bots or paid services to game its reviews system. The company also kicked over 7,000 apps out of its store that made such attempts.

Developers, developers…

Of course, it’s not just customers who benefit from a well-curated app reviews system. Developers also benefit from a more equal chance to reach customers, Apple pointed out.

It is to be hoped that any future third-party stores share some of these commitments.

Those commitments should, logically, extend to discipline against developers. Apple says that in order to prevent fraud, it terminated over 146,000 developer accounts last year. It also blocked 139,000 developer enrollments.

Why are tens of thousands of attempts to overcome App Store security taking place? It could be the sheer number of people using the store, which is currently serving 813 million visits each and every week. 

What’s not being said, but could perhaps be inferred, is that once Apple is forced to open up access to third-party stores, consumers will need to become very, very certain the stores they use are delivering at least as secure a purchasing experience as Apple already does or face the consequences of that risk.

Given choice, some stay

Apple’s critics will likely mock the company’s approach, arguing that any good retailer should provide similar protections and that the company’s attempts to reinforce perception of the potential risks reflects its prime need to protect its own revenue.

Perhaps that is true, to some extent — but what is also true is that once Apple is forced to open up access to its stores and devices on a wider basis, then the gloves will be off when it comes to promoting App Store as a service.

Apple will continue to promote the advantages its already trusted service brings, while competitors will be forced to match those commitments or be exposed as providing a more insecure, less trustworthy service. For many customers, Apple’s service will still be the choice they make.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt A quarter of European organisations have banned Elon Musk’s generative AI chatbot Grok, according to new research from cybersecurity firm Netskope.  In contrast, the most popular AI app, ChatGPT, is only blocked by 9.8% of organisations in Europe. The runner-up, Google’s Gemini, is banned by 9.2%. Grok has been under the spotlight recently for a string of blunders. They include spreading false claims about a “white genocide” in South Africa and raising doubts about Holocaust facts.  Such mishaps have raised concerns about Grok’s security and privacy controls. The report said the chatbot is frequently blocked in favour of “more secure…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Hisan Kidwai Inspired by platform fighters like Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros., Project Smash is a fun Roblox game…
The post Project Smash Codes (May 2025) appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Thomas Macaulay TNW is tapping a touch of AI magic to discover the next big things in tech. As part of our mission to elevate the startups shaping our future, we’ve partnered with Bounce Watch to bring its powerful analytics to our repertoire of tools. Bounce Watch is an intelligence platform for company performance — and it’s seriously impressed us. The AI-powered system tracks and analyses business activity in real-time, delivering data on over 1 million startups and tailored industry insights.  It offers instant alerts on funding rounds, leadership changes, and key business signals. Investors, scouts, and corporate innovators use the data to…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Siôn Geschwindt David Reger, founder and CEO of Munich-based Neura Robotics, is building humanoid robots — and a reputation with a touch of déjà vu. In the German press, he’s sometimes dubbed the “Young Elon Musk.”  It’s a nickname Reger embraces, despite all of the controversy surrounding the world’s richest man. “For me, it’s a positive, not a negative,” he told TNW in an interview. “I respect how Musk builds companies, how successful he is, how fearless he is to drive things further.” Musk’s politics, Reger continues, aren’t the focus of his admiration. “I’m just thinking about technological advancement and how to…This story continues at The Next WebOr just read more coverage about: Tesla

Source:: The Next Web

By Deepti Pathak Emojis are now part of online chats, and we can use them to introduce emotion and…
The post How To Use Emojis on Chromebook? appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

Hard as it is to believe, there was a time when using any personal technology at work was such a radical concept that most people wouldn’t even consider it an option. IT departments went to great lengths to prevent workers from using their own devices, computers, apps/subscriptions, email, and cloud services.

The release of the iPhone in 2007 began to change that. Suddenly people were discovering that the smartphone they bought for their personal use could make them more efficient and productive at work as well.

But it was Apple’s launch of its mobile device management framework in 2010 that truly created the bring your own device movement. MDM meant that users could bring their personal devices to work, and IT departments could secure those devices as needed. Almost instantly, BYOD was something that companies began to support in industries across the board.

Fifteen years later, BYOD is fully mainstream, and a majority of businesses actively support it. But advances in technology, changing user expectations, and the fallout from Covid’s remote work mandates (and subsequent return to office mandates) have shifted the landscape, sometimes without being overtly visible.

With that in mind, I decided to reexamine the assumptions and realities of BYOD and see what has and hasn’t changed in the past decade and a half.

BYOD is everywhere but device management isn’t

The exact numbers on BYOD adoption vary depending on the source you look to and how it’s being measured. A 2022 paper from HPE claims that 90% of employees use a mix of work and personal devices on the job, while Cybersecurity Insiders says that 82% of organizations have a BYOD program. However you look at it, BYOD is now massively entrenched in our work culture and extends beyond just employees and managers. According to data from Samsung (cited by JumpCloud), 61% of organizations support BYOD for non-employees including contractors, partners, and suppliers to varying degrees.

But overtly or tacitly accepting BYOD doesn’t mean that companies actively manage BYOD devices. Cybersecurity Insiders data (also via JumpCloud) also indicates that as many as 70% of BYOD devices used in the workplace aren’t managed — a number that may seem shocking, but that figure includes personal devices used by non-employees such as contractors.

About those cost savings…

In the early days, there was an assumption that BYOD would lower hardware and service costs, but that wasn’t certain. Today there’s data.

In the early 2010s, Cisco estimated a $900+ annual savings per employee, though more recent data from Samsung (cited by JumpCloud) pegs the savings as significantly lower at $341. Despite that disparity, it’s obvious that there are savings to be had, and with significantly climbing smartphone prices, those savings are is poised to grow rather than shrink.

Of course, the cost of managing devices needs to be factored in. That cost can vary widely depending on the vendor, specific products, and adopted features, but some MDM vendors charge as little as $1 per user per month (not including staff resources). The cost of providing employees company-purchased apps is also worth noting, though that falls more in line with traditional software procurement.

Productivity gains are real, but so are distractions

The data is clear that there can be significant gains in productivity attached to BYOD. Samsung estimates that workers using their own devices can gain about an hour of productive worktime per day and Cybersecurity Insiders says that 68% of businesses see some degree of productivity increases.

Although the gains are significant, personal devices can also distract workers more than company-owned devices, with personal notifications, social media accounts, news, and games being the major time-sink culprits. This has the potential to be a real issue, as these apps can become addictive and their use compulsive.

Tools of the trade

When I think back to the first five to ten years after Apple introduced MDM, it reminds me of the later stages of the birth of the solar system, with dozens of companies offering discrete tools that solved part of the mobility and BYOD puzzle, many colliding into each other or being flung out of existence. Some focused on just supporting the MDM server spec sheet, others on cloud storage, securing and managing access to corporate content, corporate app purchasing and management, secure connectivity, user and identity management, Office alternatives (Microsoft waited nearly five years releasing an iOS version of Office), and more.

Along the way, major enterprise vendors began dominating the market, some by acquisition and others by building out existing capabilities, although there were also businesses that came out of mergers of some of the new players as well.

As the market matured, it became easy to pick a single vendor to provide all enterprise mobility and BYOD needs rather than relying on multiple companies focusing on one particular requirement.

Multiplatform support has morphed into something very different

The iPhone was the clear early standard for supporting personal devices at work, in part because the hardware, operating system, and MDM mechanics were all created by a single vendor. Going multiplatform was typically assumed to mean iOS and Android — and Android was a fragmented mess of different hardware makers with sometimes widely varying devices and customized Android variants (built to spec by the manufacturers and the demands of wireless carriers) that resulted in no coherent OS update strategy.

The gap in management capabilities has narrowed significantly since then, with Google taking a much more active role in courting and supporting enterprise customers and providing a clear and coherent enterprise strategy across a wide swath of major Android phone makers and other vendors.

But that isn’t the only massive shift in what it means to be multiplatform. Today the personal devices used in the workplace (and able to be managed using MDM) include non-phone entries including Macs, Apple TVs, Chromebooks, and Windows PCs — with Macs and PCs making up a significant number of BYOD devices.

Most MDM suites support this full range of devices to one degree or another, but support costs can rise as more and more platforms (and thus complexity) are implemented — and those costs vary by platform, with general agreement that Apple devices provide the greatest savings when it comes to technical support.

How Covid changed the BYOD equation

I’m pretty sure that in 2010, not one person on the planet was predicting a global pandemic that would lead to the vast majority of knowledge workers working from home within a decade. Yet, as we all remember, that’s exactly what happened.

The need to work from home encouraged broader adoption of personal devices as well as ancillary technologies ranging from peripherals/accessories to connectivity. Despite a litany of return-to-office mandates in recent years, remote work is here to stay, whether that’s full-time, hybrid, or just working outside traditional office hours or location.

Samsung notes that 61% of businesses expect employees to work remotely to some degree, while Robert Half reports that only 61% of new job postings in 2024 had full in-office requirements. And data from WFH Research shows that at the start of 2025, employees are working remotely 28% of the time.

Passing support to new generations

One challenge for BYOD has always been user support and education. With two generations of digital natives now comprsing more than half the workforce, support and education needs have changed. Both millennials and Gen Z have grown up with the internet and mobile devices, which makes them more comfortable making technology decisions and troubleshooting problems than baby boomers and Gen X.

This doesn’t mean that they don’t need tech support, but they do tend to need less hand-holding and don’t instinctively reach for the phone to access that support. Thus, there’s an ongoing shift to self-support resources and other, less time-intensive, models with text chat being the most common — be it with a person or a bot.

They also have different expectations in areas like privacy, processes and policies, and work-life balance. Those expectations make it more important for companies to delineate their BYOD and other tech policies as well as to explain the rationale for them. This means that user education remains important, particularly in a rapidly changing landscape. It also means that policies should be communicated in more concise and easily digestible forms than large monolithic pages of legalese.

Users actually want to update (and repair or replace) their devices

Twenty years ago, the idea of updating workplace technology was typically met with a groan from users who didn’t appreciate downtime or changes in the way things looked and worked. Even as BYOD gained traction, getting users to update their devices wasn’t always easy and required a certain amount of prompting or policing. While resistance to change will never truly die out, most smartphone (and other device) users actively update on their own because of the new features that come with OS updates and new hardware. Upgrades are something to get excited about.

BYOD users also tend to be more careful with their devices just because they are their own devices. Likewise, they’re more on point with repairs or replacements and are keen to handle those issues on their own.

Security is ever evolving

Security has always been (and always will be) a major concern when it comes to BYOD, and the threats will always be evolving. The biggest concerns stem from user behavior, with users losing devices being one big concern. Verizon reports that more than 90% of security incidents involving lost or stolen devices resulted in an unauthorized data breach, and 42% involved the leaking of internal data. Another big concern is users falling prey to malicious actors: falling for phishing schemes, downloading malware, allowing corporate data to be placed in public spaces, or letting others use their devices.

Devices themselves can be major targets, with attacks coming from different directions like public Wi-Fi, malicious apps or apps that are not designed to safeguard data properly, OS and network vulnerabilities, and so on. Supporting infrastructure can also be a weak point.

These threats are real. Research by JumpCloud indicates that 20% of businesses have seen malware as a result of unmanaged devices, and nearly half aren’t able to tell if unmanaged devices have compromised their security. Cybersecurity Insiders research shows a similar statistic of 22%, while also noting that 22% of BYOD devices have connected to malicious wireless networks.

Shadow IT will always exist

Shadow IT is a phenomenon that has existed for decades but grew rapidly alongside BYOD, when users began leveraging their personal devices, apps, and services for work without IT’s involvement, knowledge, or consent. Almost every company has some degree of shadow IT, and thus unmanaged devices or other technologies.

Organizations need to educate users (even digital natives) about security and keeping their devices safe. They also need to engage users involved in shadow IT and make allies out of them, because shadow IT often stems from unmet technological needs.

Then there’s the trust component. Many users remain uncomfortable letting IT manage their devices, because they don’t understand what IT will be able to see on them. This is a user education problem that all companies need to address clearly and unequivocally.

Still the same goals

Although much has changed about BYOD, the basic goal remains the same: allowing workers to use the devices and other tools they are comfortable with and already own… and are likely to use whether sanctioned to or not.

Source:: Computer World

Windows may get all the attention, but when you want to get real work done, you turn to the applications that run on it. And if you use spreadsheets, that generally means Excel.

Excel is, of course, part of Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity tools. Microsoft sells Office under two models: Individuals and businesses can pay for the software license up front and own it forever (what the company calls the “perpetual” version of the suite), or they can purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription, which means they have access to the software for only as long as they keep paying the subscription fee.

When you purchase a perpetual version of the suite — say, Office 2021 or Office 2024 — its applications will never get new features, whereas Microsoft 365 apps are continually updated with new features. For more details, see our in-depth comparison of the two Office models.

This cheat sheet gets you up to speed on the features that have been introduced or changed in Microsoft 365’s Excel for Windows desktop client over the past few years. (If you’re looking for Excel tips for the perpetual-license Office suite, see our Office 2021 and 2024 cheat sheet.) We’ll periodically update this story as new features roll out.

In this article

Use the Ribbon

Search to get tasks done quickly

Explore Excel’s advanced chart types

Collaborate in real time

Take advantage of linked data

Make your own custom views of a worksheet

Create dynamic arrays and charts

Use AutoSave to provide a safety net as you work

Review or restore earlier versions of a spreadsheet

Try out Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel — but don’t expect too much

Other new features to check out

Use keyboard shortcuts

Use the Ribbon

The Ribbon interface, which puts commonly used commands in a tabbed toolbar running across the top of the application window, is alive and well in the current version of Excel. Microsoft has tweaked the Ribbon’s looks numerous times over the years, but it still works the same way it always has: just click one of the Ribbon’s tabs to see related commands on the toolbar. For example, click Insert to find buttons for inserting tables, PivotTables, charts, and more.

Through the years, Excel’s Ribbon has gotten a variety of cosmetic changes, but it still works largely the way it always has.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Just as in previous versions of Excel, if you want the Ribbon commands to go away, press Ctrl-F1 or click the name of the tab you’re currently on. (The tabs above the Ribbon — File, Home, Insert, and so on — stay visible.) To make the commands reappear, press Ctrl-F1 again or click any tab name.

You’ve got other options for displaying the Ribbon as well. To get to them, click the Ribbon display options icon (a down arrow) on the bottom of the Ribbon at the far right, just below the Share button. A drop-down menu appears with these four options:

Full-screen mode: This makes Excel take up your entire screen and hides the Ribbon. To get out of full-screen mode, click the three-dot icon at the upper right of the screen.

Show tabs only: This shows the tabs but hides the commands underneath them. It’s the same as pressing Ctrl-F1. To display the commands underneath the tabs when they’re hidden, press Ctrl-F1, click a tab, or click the Ribbon display options down arrow and select Always show Ribbon.

Always show Ribbon: This displays the entire Ribbon, both the tabs and commands underneath them.

Show/Hide Quick Access toolbar: This displays or hides the Quick Access toolbar, which gives you fast access to Excel commands you want to have available no matter which tab you’re on. When you enable the toolbar, it starts off empty. To populate it, click a small down arrow that appears at the right of the toolbar and from the drop-down menu that appears, choose which features to put on it. If you don’t see a command you want, click More Commands. Find the command you want on the left and click Add.

You can have the toolbar appear either at the top of the screen, just to the right of the AutoSave button, or just underneath the Ribbon. To move it from one place to another, click a small down arrow that appears at the right of the toolbar and from the drop-down menu that appears, select either Show below the Ribbon or Show above the Ribbon. 

Microsoft has for many years teased a simplified version of the Ribbon that hides most of the commands to reduce clutter. That simplified Ribbon is available in the Excel web app, but there’s currently no sign that it will appear in the Excel desktop app.

There’s a useful feature in what Microsoft calls the backstage area that appears when you click the File tab on the Ribbon. If you click Open or Save a Copy from the menu on the left, you can see the cloud-based services you’ve connected to your Office account, such as SharePoint and OneDrive. Each location displays its associated email address underneath it. This is quite helpful if you use a cloud service with more than one account, such as if you have one OneDrive account for personal use and another one for business. You’ll be able to see at a glance which is which.

Click the Add a service dropdown to add another cloud storage account.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Search to get tasks done quickly

Excel has never been the most user-friendly of applications, and it has so many powerful features it can be tough to keep track of them all. That’s where the handy Search feature comes in.

To use it, click in the Search box — it’s above the Ribbon in the green title area. (Keyboard fans can instead press Alt-Q.) Then type in a task you want to do. If you want to summarize your spreadsheet data using a PivotTable, for example, type in something like summarize with pivot table. You’ll get a menu showing potential matches for the task. In this instance, the top result is a direct link to the form for summarizing with a PivotTable — select it and you’ll start your task right away, without having to go to the Ribbon’s Insert tab first.

The search box makes it easy to perform just about any task in Excel.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

If you’d like more information about your task, the final items that appear in the menu let you select from related Help topics.

Even if you consider yourself a spreadsheet jockey, it’s worth your while to try out the enhanced search function. It’s a big time-saver, and far more efficient than hunting through the Ribbon to find a command.

Also useful is that it remembers the features you’ve previously clicked on in the box, so when you click in it, you first see a list of previous tasks you’ve searched for. That makes sure that tasks that you frequently perform are always within easy reach. And it puts tasks you rarely do within easy reach as well.

Users of enterprise and education editions of Microsoft 365 can also use the Search box to find people in their organization, SharePoint resources, and other personalized results from within Excel. (See the Microsoft Search support page for more details about all it can do.)

Explore Excel’s advanced chart types

Charts are great for visualizing and presenting spreadsheet data, and for gaining insights from it. To that end, Microsoft has introduced a number of advanced chart types over the past several years, including most notably a histogram (frequently used in statistics), a “waterfall” that’s effective at showing running financial totals, and a hierarchical treemap that helps you find patterns in data.

Note that the new charts are available only if you’re working in an .xlsx document. If you use the older .xls format, you won’t find them.

To see all the charts, put your cursor in a cell or group of cells that contains data, select Insert > Recommended Charts and click the All Charts tab. You’ll find the newer charts, mixed in with the older ones. Select any to create the chart. (For help using charts, see our guide to charts and sparklines in Excel.)

Excel includes several advanced chart types, including waterfall.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

These are the new chart types:

Treemap. This chart type creates a hierarchical view of your data, with top-level categories (or tree branches) shown as rectangles, and with subcategories (or sub-branches) shown as smaller rectangles grouped inside the larger ones. Thus, you can easily compare the sizes of top-level categories and subcategories in a single view. For instance, a bookstore can see at a glance that it brings in more revenue from 1st Readers, a subcategory of Children’s Books, than for the entire Non-fiction top-level category.

srcset=”https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 830w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=300%2C191&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=768%2C489&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=264%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 264w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=132%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 132w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=753%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 753w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=565%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 565w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel2016_chart_treemap.jpg?resize=392%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 392w” width=”830″ height=”529″ sizes=”(max-width: 830px) 100vw, 830px”>A treemap chart lets you easily compare top-level categories and subcategories in a single view.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Sunburst. This chart type also displays hierarchical data, but in a multi-level pie chart. Each level of the hierarchy is represented by a circle. The innermost circle contains the top-level categories, the next circle out shows subcategories, the circle after that subsubcategories and so on.

Sunbursts are best for showing the relationships among categories and subcategories, while treemaps are better at showing the relative sizes of categories and subcategories.

A sunburst chart shows hierarchical data such as book categories and subcategories as a multi-level pie chart.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Waterfall. This chart type is well-suited for visualizing financial statements. It displays a running total of the positive and negative contributions toward a final net value.

A waterfall chart shows a running total of positive and negative contributions, such as revenue and expenses, toward a final net value.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Histogram. This kind of chart shows frequencies within a data set. It could, for example, show the number of books sold in specific price ranges in a bookstore.

Histograms are good for showing frequencies, such as number of books sold at various price points.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Pareto. This chart, also known as a sorted histogram, contains bars as well as a line graph. Values are represented in descending order by bars. The cumulative total percentage of each bar is represented by a rising line. In the bookstore example, each bar could show a reason for a book being returned (defective, priced incorrectly, and so on). The chart would show, at a glance, the primary reasons for returns, so a bookstore owner could focus on those issues.

Note that the Pareto chart does not show up when you select Insert > Recommended Charts > All Charts. To use it, first select the data you want to chart, then select Insert > Insert Statistic Chart, and under Histogram, choose Pareto.

In a Pareto chart, or sorted histogram, a rising line represents the cumulative total percentage of the items being measured. In this example, it’s easy to see that more than 80% of a bookstore’s returns are attributable to three problems.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Box & Whisker. This chart, like a histogram, shows frequencies within a data set but provides for a deeper analysis than a histogram. For example, in a bookstore it could show the distribution of prices of different genres of books. In the example shown here, each “box” represents the first to third quartile of prices for books in that genre, while the “whiskers” (the lines extending up and down from the box) show the upper and lower range of prices. Outliers that are priced outside the whiskers are shown as dots, the median price for each genre is shown with a horizontal line across the box, and the mean price is shown with an x.

Box & Whisker charts can show details about data ranges such as the first to third quartile in the “boxes,” median and mean inside the boxes, upper and lower range with the “whiskers,” and outliers with dots.Preston Gralla / Foundry

Funnel. This chart type is useful when you want to display values at multiple stages in a process. A funnel chart can show the number of sales prospects at every stage of a sales process, for example, with prospects at the top for the first stage, qualified prospects underneath it for the second stage, and so on, until you get to the final stage, closed sales. Generally, the values in funnel charts decrease with each stage, so the bars in the chart look like a funnel.

Funnel charts let you display values at multiple stages in a process.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

When creating the data for a funnel chart, use one column for the stages in the process you’re charting, and a second column for the values for each stage. Once you’ve done that, to create the chart, select the data, then select Insert > Recommended Charts > All Charts > Funnel.

Map. Map charts do exactly what you think they should: They let you compare data across different geographical regions, such as countries, regions, states, counties, or postal codes. Excel will automatically recognize the regions and create a map that visualizes the data.

You can compare data across different locations with a map chart.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

To create a map chart, select the data you want to chart, then select Insert > Maps, then select the map chart. Note that in some instances, Excel might have a problem creating the map — for example, if there are multiple locations with the same name as one that you’re mapping. If that occurs, you’ll have to add one or more columns with details about the locations. If, say, you’re charting towns in the United Kingdom, you would have to include columns for the county and country each town is located in.

Collaborate in real time

For those who frequently collaborate with others, a welcome feature in Excel for Microsoft 365 is real-time collaboration that lets people work on spreadsheets together from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Microsoft calls this “co-authoring.”

Note that in order to use co-authoring, the spreadsheet must be stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online, and you must be logged into your Microsoft 365 account. Also, co-authoring works in Excel only if you have AutoSave turned on. To do it, choose the On option on the AutoSave slider at the top left of the screen.

To share a spreadsheet so you can collaborate on it with others: first open it, then click the Share button on the upper-right of the Excel screen. The “Send link” window pops up. Here you can send an email with a link where others can access the spreadsheet.

Use the “Send link” pane to share a document and the “Link settings” pane to fine-tune its access permissions.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Enter the email address of the person with whom you want to share in the text box. Enter multiple addresses, separated by commas, if you want to share the workbook with multiple people.

One feature I found particularly useful when adding email addresses: As you type, Excel looks through your corporate or personal address book and lists the names and addresses of contacts who match the text you’ve input. Click the address you want to add. This not only saves you a bit of time but helps make sure you don’t incorrectly type in addresses.

Next, decide whether anyone with the link can access the file, or only those whose email addresses you enter. If you see the text “Anyone with the link can edit” near the top of the pane, you can change that by clicking it, then choosing Specific people on the screen that appears. Similarly, if “Specific people” appears above the email addresses, you can change that by clicking it, then choosing Anyone with the link can edit from the screen that appears.

(If you use a business, enterprise, or education edition of Office, your IT department may have set up different sharing permissions on these two screens, such as an option to allow anyone within your organization to edit the document. You may also need to click a Link settings button — a gear icon — to access the “Link settings” pane.)

On this second screen you can also set the document to read-only for everybody, or allow everybody to edit it. In the “Other settings” section, click the down arrow and choose either Can edit, which allows full editing, or Can view, which is read-only. If you want to give certain people editing privileges and others view-only privileges, you can send two separate invitations with different rights selected.

On this screen you can also set an expiration date after which people won’t be able to access the file, and you can set a password so that only people who have the password can access it. When you’ve made your selections, click Apply.

Back in the main “Send link” screen, you can send a message along with the link by typing it into the Message box. Then click Send. An email is sent to all the recipients with a link they can click to open the document.

Your collaborators will get an email like this when you share a spreadsheet.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

(If you’d rather send recipients a copy of the file as an Excel file instead of a link, and thus not allow real-time collaboration, click Send a copy at the bottom of the “Send link” screen.)

There’s another way to share a file stored in a personal OneDrive for collaboration: In the “Copy link” area at the bottom of the “Send link” pane, click Copy. When you do that, you can copy the link and send it to someone yourself via email. Note that you have the same options for setting access and editing permissions as you do if you have Excel send the link directly for you. Just click Anyone with the link can edit or Specific people below “Copy link,” and follow the instructions above.

To begin collaborating: When your recipients receive the email and click to open the spreadsheet, they’ll open it in the web version of Excel in a browser, not in the desktop version of Excel. If you’ve granted them edit permissions, they can begin editing immediately in the browser or else click Editing > Open in Desktop App on the upper right of the screen to work in the Excel desktop client. Excel for the web is less powerful and polished than the desktop client, but it works well enough for real-time collaboration.

As soon as any collaborators open the file, you’ll see a colored cursor that indicates their presence in the file. Each person collaborating gets a different color. Hover your cursor over a colored cell that indicates someone’s presence, and you’ll see their name. Once they begin editing the workbook, such as entering data or a formula into a cell, creating a chart, and so on, you see the changes they make in real time. Your cursor also shows up on their screen as a color, and they see the changes you make.

You can easily see where collaborators are working in a shared worksheet.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Collaboration includes the ability to make comments in a file, inside individual cells, without actually changing the contents of the cell. To do it, right-click a cell, select New Comment and type in your comment. Everyone collaborating can see that a cell has a comment in it — it’s indicated by a small colored notch appearing in the upper right of the cell. The color matches the person’s collaboration color.

To see someone’s comment in a cell, hover your cursor over the cell or put your cursor in the cell and you’ll see the comment, the name of the person who made the comment, and a Reply box you can use to send a reply. You can also click the Comments button on the upper right of the screen to open the Comments pane, which lists every comment by every person. Click any comment to jump to the cell it’s in. You can also reply when you click a comment in the pane.

You can make see comments that other people make, and make comments yourself.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Take advantage of linked data

Excel for Microsoft 365 has a feature that Microsoft calls “linked data types.” Essentially, they’re cells that are connected to an online source (Bing) that automatically updates their information — for example, a company’s current stock price. As I write this, there are nearly approximately 100 linked data types, including not just obvious data types such as stocks, geography, and currencies, but many others, including chemistry, cities, anatomy, food, yoga, and more.

To use them, type the items you want to track into cells in a single column. For stocks, for example, you can type in a series of stock ticker symbols, company names, fund names, etc. After that, select the cells, then on the Ribbon’s Data tab, select Stocks in the Data Types section in the middle. (If you had typed in geographic names such as countries, states, or cities, you would instead select Geography.) Excel automatically converts the text in each cell into the matching data source — in our example, into the company name and stock ticker.

Excel also adds a small icon to the left edge of each cell identifying it as a linked cell. Click any icon and a data card will pop up showing all sorts of information about the kind of information you’ve typed in.  For instance, a stock data card shows stock-related information such as current price, today’s high and low, and 52-week high and low, as well as general company information including industry and number of employees. A location card shows the location’s population, capital, GDP, and so on.

You can build out a table using data from the data card. To do so, select the cells again, and an Insert Data button appears. Click the button, then select the information you want to appear, such as Price for the current stock price, or Population for the population of a geographic region.

srcset=”https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 620w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?resize=300%2C293&quality=50&strip=all 300w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?resize=172%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 172w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?resize=86%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 86w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?resize=491%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 491w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?resize=368%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 368w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/excel-microsoft365-15-linked-data-2023.jpg?resize=256%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 256w” width=”620″ height=”606″ sizes=”(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px”>Linked data types let you insert information, such as a company’s high and low stock prices, that is continually updated.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Excel will automatically add a column to the right populated with the latest information for each item you’re tracking, and will keep it updated. You can click the Insert Data button multiple times to keep adding columns to the right for different types of data from the item’s data card.  It’s helpful to add column headers so you know what each column is showing.

Make your own custom views of a worksheet

Sheet Views let you make a copy of a sheet and then apply filtered or sorted views of the data to the new sheet. It’s useful when you’re working with other people on a spreadsheet, and someone wants to create a customized view without altering the original sheet. You can all create multiple custom-filtered/sorted views for a sheet. Once you’ve saved a sheet view, anyone with access to the spreadsheet can see it.

Note: To use this feature, your spreadsheet must be stored in OneDrive.

Sheet views work best when your data is in table format. Select the data, then go to the Ribbon toolbar and click the Insert tab. Near the left end of the Insert toolbar, click the Table button and then OK.

To create a new sheet view, click the Ribbon’s View tab, then click the New button in the Sheet View area at the far left. The row numbers and column letters at the left and top of your spreadsheet turn black to let you know you’re in a new sheet view. In the Sheet View area of the Ribbon, it says Temporary View, the default name given to a new sheet view before you’ve saved it.

Here’s a sheet view with data sorted from highest to lowest costs.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Now apply whatever sorting and filtering you like to the data. (If you need help, see the “How to sort and filter data” section of our Excel tables guide.)

To save this view, click the Keep button in the Sheet View area of the Ribbon. When you do that, it is saved as “View1” by default. You can click View1 and type in a more meaningful name for the view. When you click Exit on this toolbar, you return to your spreadsheet, and the row numbers and columns on the left and top of the spreadsheet are no longer black.

To switch from one sheet view to another, click the View tab. At the left of the Ribbon toolbar, click the down arrow next to the name of the current view (it will say Default if you’re viewing the spreadsheet without a sheet view applied) to open a dropdown list of the sheet views created for the spreadsheet. Click the name of a sheet view to switch to it. Whenever you’re looking at a sheet view, the row numbers and column letters framing your spreadsheet remain black to indicate that you’re in a sheet view, not the original spreadsheet.

Create dynamic arrays and charts

Dynamic arrays let you write formulas that return multiple values based on your data. When data on the spreadsheet is updated, the dynamic arrays automatically update and resize themselves.

To create a dynamic array, first create a table as outlined in the previous tip. Make sure to include a column that lists categories. Also put in at least one column to its right that lists corresponding values. Put a header at the top of each column.

So, for example, if you’re creating a spreadsheet for a business trip budget, Column A might list expenses, such as plane tickets, meals, hotel, etc., and Column B could list each item’s cost on the same row.

Once you’ve set up the table, use a dynamic array function on it, such as FILTER, SORT, or UNIQUE to create a dynamic array next to the table. Here’s an example of a formula for using the FILTER function:

=FILTER(A2:B9, B2:B9 Options > Save and uncheck the box marked AutoSave files stored in the Cloud by default on Excel.

Using AutoSave may require some rethinking of your workflow. Many people are used to creating new worksheets based on existing ones by opening the existing file, making changes to it, and then using Save As to save the new version under a different name, leaving the original file intact. Be warned that doing this with AutoSave enabled will save your changes in the original file. Instead, Microsoft suggests opening the original file and immediately selecting File > Save a Copy (which replaces Save As when AutoSave is enabled) to create a new version.

If AutoSave does save unwanted changes to a file, you can always use the Version History feature described below to roll back to an earlier version.

Review or restore earlier versions of a spreadsheet

There’s an extremely useful feature hiding in the title bar in Excel for Microsoft 365: You can use Version History to go back to previous versions of a file, review them, compare them side-by-side with your existing version, and copy and paste from an older file to your existing one. You can also restore an entire old version.

To do it, click the file name at the top of the screen in an open file. A drop-down menu appears. Click Version History, and the Version History pane appears on the right side of the screen with a list of the previous versions of the file, including the time and date they were saved. (Alternatively, you can select the File tab on the Ribbon, click Info from the menu on the left, and then click the Version History button.)

Use Version History to see all previous versions of a spreadsheet, copy and paste from an older file to your existing one, or restore an entire old version.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

In the Version History pane, click Open version under any older version, and that version appears as a read-only version in a new window. Scroll through the version and copy any content you want, then paste it into the latest version of the file. To restore the old version, overwriting the current one, click the Restore button.

Try out Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel — but don’t expect too much

For an additional subscription fee, business users of Excel can use Microsoft’s genAI add-in, Microsoft 365 Copilot. You can have Copilot suggest and create charts, create formulas, mine spreadsheets for data insights you might have missed, and more. If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription, many of those features are now bundled with your core subscription.

To start using Copilot in Excel, open a spreadsheet and click the Copilot button at the right of the Ribbon’s Home tab. The Copilot panel will appear on the right, offering suggestions for actions it can perform, such as summarizing your data with a chart, adding formulas to the spreadsheet, or applying conditional formatting to the sheet. You can also chat with Copilot in the panel, asking questions about your data or how to perform an action yourself.

Note that these suggestions are generic and won’t always make sense. For example, when you start with a blank worksheet and click the Copilot button, its suggestions include summarizing data using pivot tables or charts, even though there’s no data to chart or put into a table.

Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you in multiple ways in Excel, including creating formulas and charts, mining spreadsheets for insights, and more.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

In my testing, I found that Copilot wasn’t particularly helpful. For example, when I asked it to summarize data using a PivotTable or chart, several times it responded, “Something went wrong. Please try again in a moment.” Then it said that I first needed to reformat parts of my spreadsheet by using the Transform() function, and gave confusing advice on how I could do it — it wouldn’t do the task itself. (Eventually, I gave up.)

When I asked it to suggest conditional formatting for my spreadsheet, which would highlight important data, it told me which data I should highlight but didn’t explain why the data was important. It also didn’t do the highlighting for me or tell me how to do it.

I gave it one more try and asked it to perform an advanced analysis, which it would use Python to do. It certainly did something, although it was unclear what it was. It overwrote my original spreadsheet and added a section that claimed to show annual growth rates for revenue streams. But the data seemed to be incorrect.

Perhaps advanced spreadsheet jockeys might be able to make sense of what Copilot is up to whenever they ask it for help. But mere mortal businesspeople may find it of no help at all.

In my testing, I found Copilot not at all helpful, although spreadsheet jockeys may be able to make some sense of what it does.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

What’s more, Microsoft’s focus on Copilot in M365 has reduced the usefulness of Excel in some ways. For example, there used to be a handy feature called Smart Lookup that let you conduct targeted web searches from inside Excel. But at the beginning of 2025, Microsoft removed Smart Lookup from Excel, saying that the feature has been deprecated.

Now the only way to search the web from inside Excel is via Copilot, which lacks some features of Smart Lookup — notably the ability to highlight words or phrases in a document and trigger an automatic web search. And M365 Copilot isn’t available to business customers unless they pay the additional subscription fee.

Other features to check out

Spreadsheet pros will be pleased with several other features and tools that have been added to Excel for Microsoft 365 over the past few years, from a quick data analysis tool to an advanced 3D mapping platform.

Get an instant data analysis

If you’re looking to analyze data in a spreadsheet, the Quick Analysis tool will help. Highlight the cells you want to analyze, then move your cursor to the lower right-hand corner of what you’ve highlighted. A small icon of a spreadsheet with a lightning bolt on it appears. Click it and you’ll get a variety of tools for performing instant analysis of your data. For example, you can use the tool to highlight the cells with a value greater than a specific number, get the numerical average for the selected cells, or create a chart on the fly.

The Quick Analysis feature gives you a variety of tools for analyzing your data instantly.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Translate text

You can translate text from right within Excel. Highlight the cell whose text you want translated, then select Review > Translate. A Translator pane opens on the right. Excel will detect the words’ language at the top of the pane; you then select the language you want it translated to below. If Excel can’t detect the language of the text you chose or detects it incorrectly, you can override it.

Easily find worksheets that have been shared with you

It’s easy to forget which worksheets others have shared with you. In Excel for Microsoft 365 there’s an easy way to find them: Select File > Open > Shared with Me to see a list of them all. Note that this only works with OneDrive (both Personal and Business) and SharePoint Online. You’ll also need to be signed into you Microsoft or work or school account.

Predict the future with Forecast Sheet

Using the Forecast Sheet function, you can generate forecasts built on historical data. If, for example, you have a worksheet showing past book sales by date, Forecast Sheet can predict future sales based on past ones.

To use the feature, you must be working in a worksheet that has time-based historical data. Put your cursor in one of the data cells, go to the Data tab on the Ribbon and select Forecast Sheet from the Forecast group toward the right. On the screen that appears, you can select various options such as whether to create a line or bar chart and what date the forecast should end. Click the Create button, and a new worksheet will appear showing your historical and predicted data and the forecast chart. (Your original worksheet will be unchanged.)

The Forecast Sheet feature can predict future results based on historical data.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Manage data for analysis with Get & Transform

This feature is not entirely new to Excel. Formerly known as Power Query, it was made available as a free add-in to Excel 2013 and worked only with the PowerPivot features in Excel Professional Plus. Microsoft’s Power BI business intelligence software offers similar functionality.

Now called Get & Transform, it’s a business intelligence tool that lets you pull in, combine, and shape data from wide variety of local and cloud sources. These include Excel workbooks, CSV files, SQL Server and other databases, Azure, Active Directory, and many others. You can also use data from public sources including Wikipedia.

Get & Transform helps you pull in and shape data from a wide variety of sources.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

You’ll find the Get & Transform tools together in a group on the Data tab in the Ribbon. For more about using these tools, see Microsoft’s “Getting Started with Get & Transform in Excel.”

Make a 3D map

Before Excel 2016, Power Map was a popular free 3D geospatial visualization add-in for Excel. Now it’s free, built into Excel for Microsoft 365, and has been renamed 3D Maps. With it, you can plot geographic and other information on a 3D globe or map. You’ll need to first have data suitable for mapping, and then prepare that data for 3D Maps.

Those steps are beyond the scope of this article, but here’s advice from Microsoft about how to get and prepare data for 3D Maps. Once you have properly prepared data, open the spreadsheet and select Insert > 3D Map > Open 3D Maps. Then click Enable from the box that appears. That turns on the 3D Maps feature. For details on how to work with your data and customize your map, head to the Microsoft tutorial “Get started with 3D Maps.”

If you don’t have data for mapping but just want to see firsthand what a 3D map is like, you can download sample data created by Microsoft. The screenshot shown here is from Microsoft’s Dallas Utilities Seasonal Electricity Consumption Simulation demo. When you’ve downloaded the workbook, open it up, select Insert > 3D Map > Open 3D Maps and click the map to launch it.

With 3D Maps you can plot geospatial data in an interactive 3D map.
Preston Gralla / Foundry

Automate tasks

If you have OneDrive for Business and use Excel with a commercial or educational Microsoft 365 license, you can automate tasks with the Automate tab. You’ll be able to create and edit scripts with the Code Editor, run automated tasks with a button click, and share the script with co-workers. See Microsoft’s “Office Scripts in Excel” documentation for details.

Insert data from a picture into Excel

There are times you may find data inside an image file that you’d like to get into Excel. Typically, you’ll have to input the data from it manually. There’s now a way to have Excel convert the information on the image into data for a worksheet.

In the Get & Transform Data group on the Data tab, click the From Picture dropdown and select Picture From File to choose the image you want to grab data from, or Picture from Clipboard to take a screenshot of an image on your PC and then import the data. For more details, see Microsoft’s “Insert data from picture” support page.  

Use keyboard shortcuts

Here’s one last productivity tip: If you memorize a handful of keyboard shortcuts for common tasks in Excel, you can save a great deal of time over hunting for the right command to click on. See “Handy Excel keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac” for our favorites.

This article was originally published in August 2019 and most recently updated in May 2025.

More Excel tutorials:

Excel basics: Get started with tables

Excel basics: Get started with charts and sparklines

How to use PivotTables and PivotCharts in Excel

How to use slicers in Excel

How to use Excel formulas and functions

How (and why) to use conditional formatting in Excel

How to use Excel macros to save time and automate your work

Source:: Computer World