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Watch Window finally in Excel for Mac

An essential Excel testing and debugging tool is finally in Excel 365 for Mac.  The Watch Window makes fixing workbooks a lot easier.

Watch Window is a separate pane which shows the current status of selected cells from across many workbooks or sheets.  When you can’t figure out why Excel is misbehaving, the Watch Window puts key cells in a single view.

It’s on the Formulas tab | Watch Window – on the right next to ‘Error-checking’.

Select a cell or range then click the + button to add them to Watch Window.  For each cell you can see:

  • Workbook
  • Sheet
  • Name
  • Cell reference
  • Value
  • Formula

Narrow the width for any columns you don’t need (like Workbook in the above example).

Rearrange columns

The columns can be rearranged by drag and drop. Here we’ve put the cell reference, value and formula first.

That’s a very useful trick NOT possible in Excel for Windows! 

Sadly, the columns can’t be sorted.

Floating Window

Watch Window appears as a docked pane on the right but can be dragged off to make a floating window.  Drag from the ‘Watch Window’ title bar.

As a floating window, Watch Window can be anywhere on the screen leaving the Excel worksheet completely or partly in view.

Who has Watch Window?

Excel 365 for Mac has it now. It previewed in late 2020 and is now in public releases of Excel 365 for Mac.

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