GoKawiil
Tech News
Microsoft is piloting an Excel update that lets a single cell hold lists and arrays instead of just one value, breaking from the spreadsheet's traditional one-cell, one-value design. The feature is available to Microsoft 365 Insiders in the Excel Beta Channel on Windows and Mac, letting users create lists via Insert > List or Ctrl+J, and reference or filter individual items within them using formulas.
Microsoft is introducing a feature allowing single cells in Excel to hold lists and arrays of data, rather than just individual values. The change marks a structural update to the spreadsheet program, which has not previously supported this kind of nested data within one cell.
Databricks has acquired Row Zero, an early-stage startup whose cloud spreadsheet tool scales beyond 1 million live rows. Databricks plans to combine Row Zero with its Genie AI agent so users can query and manipulate secured data using familiar spreadsheet formulas rather than exporting it elsewhere. Terms were not disclosed; Row Zero had raised $10 million in May 2025 at a $40 million valuation, per PitchBook.
OnPay's analysis of search trends finds small-business owners collectively run over 91,000 searches a year on how to process payroll manually, while employees log 35,000 more searches looking for ways to cash paper checks. The company points to case studies like Max Farnsworth of Farnsworth Industries, who cut hours of monthly manual payroll work down dramatically after switching to an automated platform.
A recent analysis explores how someone deciphering an unknown ancient counting system could tell whether it used a positional base (like base 5 or base 20) or a 'bijective' base lacking a zero symbol, similar to Excel's column-labeling scheme. The piece argues that without contextual clues—like knowing what number a symbol represents—distinguishing these systems from raw symbol frequency alone would require enormous sample sizes, though tools like Benford's Law could help identify leading digits in large enough datasets.