Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to ensure that your spreadsheets are backwards compatible with Excel 2021 and earlier. The rolling release of new features across three channels presents a special challenge for Microsoft 365 users looking to take advantage of the rapid pace of improvements. You can determine if other users have the same functionality as you --or better --by comparing the build and version numbers between your copy of Excel and theirs.

You also learned about one of the biggest nuances in Excel, the difference between Enter mode and Edit mode, so that you can now spend less time fighting with Excel when you need to make changes to formulas and cell references. We also looked at an odd quirk of the Sparklines feature where the order in which you carry out steps will predicate whether you can complete a task or not. Fortunately, this is an outlier in Excel—I don’t know of any other feature that has this curious restriction.

If circular references...