Bitcoin support coming later this year for all Excel apps

Jan 3, 2017 12:44 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has recently announced that it would be adding Bitcoin support to Excel, as part of a larger update that would be released later this year.

Martin Butler, Account Executive, Globals at Microsoft, revealed in a post on LinkedIn that Microsoft was working to make Bitcoin support available in all versions of the Excel app, including here not only the desktop program but also the mobile app being offered to iOS, Android, and Windows 10 Mobile users.

“In 2017, Excel will be able to recognize, format, calculate and analyze numbers expressed in Bitcoin currency. The new feature will be available for Excel running under Windows 10, Android, Mac OS and iOS, and will include Excel Mobile versions as well,” he explained.

First announced in April 2016

Microsoft announced for the first time that Bitcoin currency format support would be added to Excel in April 2016, when the firm said that an upcoming update for its productivity app would serve as the company’s commitment to cryptocurrency.

At that point, it was believed that Microsoft wanted Bitcoin support in Excel to support eight decimal places instead of two or BTC or XBT currency format in Excel for easier data compilation.

“Now use Excel to track, calculate and analyze Bitcoin data using native Bitcoin number formatting options. Feature is being rolled out to Excel 2016 for Windows, Excel Online, Excel Mobile for Windows, and Excel Mobile for Android,” a Microsoft document revealed at that point.

Work on adding Bitcoin support in Excel, however, took longer than expected, so hopefully it would complete in the coming months. Office insiders will be the first to receive it before everyone else gets it sooner or later depending on the feedback.

Additionally, Microsoft will be adding real-time transcription and translation of Skype Meeting Broadcast, which means that enterprises using this app will be able to automatically share the closed-captioning transcript from a meeting. The supported languages will include English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and German.