Focus Cell feature in Excel

Excel has a rather new feature called "Focus Cell." It may be in beta, but somehow it mysteriously appeared on my Mac and now it's disappeared. It makes searching very much easier, visually and is a neat new feature.

Has anyone else experienced this feature? You can check it out on YT. On a Windows machine, there is a button to toggle - that space on Excel for Mac is just blank - yet somehow I activated it and then it unactivated.

As I said, if anyone has discovered this and has an idea how to activate it again, I'm all ears!

Regards!

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.7

Posted on Jan 10, 2025 11:46 AM

Top-ranking reply

ErnestoLB

Level 1

14 points

Posted on Feb 4, 2025 01:04 AM

I found an article on the Microsoft forums that’s it’s now available in EXCEL for a majority of Mac and Windows Users. I have gone down the rabbit hole and do not see it in the version I have. The article was dated 12/05/2025

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17 replies

Manuchap

Level 1

8 points

Feb 6, 2025 11:35 AM in response to AB_1978

It's Microsoft Autoupdater. Should be installed with excel and launch at startup.

Try pasting this into the Terminal app:

open /Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft\ AutoUpdate.app

Rick Hess Author

Level 1

37 points

Feb 7, 2025 10:32 AM in response to Manuchap

I ran Autoupdater. Still no Focus Cell. I think we'll get it when Microsoft is good and ready. It's worth waiting for. Thanks for the help!

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Focus Cell feature in Excel