Changelog

What's new

Every release of ExcelSurge and SlideSurge, with notes. Already installed? The add-ins ping for new versions on launch and tell you when there's an update.

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ExcelSurge

8 releases
  1. v1.0.0.73#
    • **New: Quick Colors** (formerly IB Colors) — one-click colouring now has an editor: pick your own colour per cell type — hardcoded inputs, formulas, links to another sheet, and links to another workbook. Existing shortcuts keep working.
    • **New: colour-coded formula components in the Tracer** — each cell reference in a formula gets its own colour, the matching tree rows match it, and selecting a node highlights exactly where it sits in the formula. On the Dependents tab, the reference back to your traced cell is highlighted instead.
    • **New: Multiple, Price, Units and Foreign-currency formats in Company Theme** — valuation multiples (`16.2x`), per-share prices, share counts and a second currency each get their own setting instead of sharing one currency format.
    • **Improved: Trace Dependents now covers the whole workbook** — dependents on other sheets are included, so tracing an input that feeds downstream sheets shows the full picture.
    • **Improved: sharper precedent detection in the Tracer** — cell references written inside quoted text and function names that resemble references are no longer picked up as precedents.
    • **Improved: Company Theme respects each cell's number format** — percentages stay percentages, multiples stay multiples, and prices keep their decimals when a theme is applied.
    • **Improved: Compare Workbooks** — changed inputs are now flagged High risk and always included in the Changed Inputs summary, with cleaner Before/After formatting in the report.
    • Company Theme window now lays out cleanly on smaller and scaled displays; audit PDF polish.
  2. v1.0.0.62#
    • **Improved: charts sent to PowerPoint refresh reliably** — including charts from earlier exports, which SlideSurge now heals automatically.
    • **Compare Workbooks: shift-aware comparison** — inserted or deleted rows are now tracked across sheets instead of showing every shifted row as a change, with a clearer "Changed Inputs" summary and a redesigned comparison report.
  3. v1.0.0.61#
    • **Redesigned Workbook Health pane** — a cleaner layout with a health-score ring, colour-coded finding cards, and quick Fix / Dismiss / Snooze actions on each finding.
    • **Smarter, more precise audit** — formulas dragged across year columns, and rows that mix dollars and percentages (e.g. a % margin sitting under $ revenue), are now recognised correctly.
    • **New performance checks** — the audit now catches whole-column references (e.g. `SUM(A:A)`), high-impact volatile functions like `OFFSET`/`INDIRECT` that force thousands of cells to recalculate, and conditional-formatting bloat — all under a new dedicated Performance score.
    • **A more trustworthy overall score** — the grade is now a weighted blend of the category scores, and the headline explains what's holding it down (e.g. "mainly held down by Dependencies").
    • **Better circular-reference detection** — finds every loop and lists its exact cells, and tells an intentional interest/debt loop apart from an accidental one.
    • **Cleaner results** — network and cloud (SharePoint/OneDrive) links are recognised correctly, and the hardcoded-assumption and IFERROR checks are more precise.
    • Company Theme gains row-height, column-width and header-styling options; Quick Colors recolours only numbers, leaving text labels untouched.
  4. v1.0.0.58#
    • Tracer redesign: the selected cell's formula now shows in a prominent wrapping bar at the top (value shown compactly at the bottom), and precedents expand downward like dependents.
    • Tracer "go to cell" now scrolls the target into view even across multiple windows and frozen panes.
    • Multi-cell range precedents now show a clear "drill in" prompt instead of a raw object placeholder.
    • You can now assign shortcuts using Home, End, Page Up/Down, Insert, Delete and the arrow keys (e.g. Ctrl+Home).
  5. v1.0.0.57#
    • Undo (Ctrl+Z) now fully reverses a color or formatting change applied to a whole-sheet selection (Ctrl+A).
    • One-click "Fix it" actions in the Workbook Health audit: recolor unmarked hardcoded inputs blue, and switch a workbook from manual to automatic calculation.
  6. v1.0.0.54#
    • Stability and reliability improvements.
  7. v1.0.0.51#
    • **New: in-app update notifications.** ExcelSurge now checks for a newer version on startup and shows a non-blocking notice when one is available, so you always know when there's an update.
  8. v1.0.0.43#
    • Initial public release.
    • Formula auditing and cross-sheet tracing with the **Trace** task pane.
    • Investment-banking color formatting (blue inputs, black formulas, green links).
    • One-click number formats and borders matching IB conventions.
    • Custom keyboard shortcuts via the visual **Shortcut Manager** — remap anything, no XML editing.
    • Command palette (Ctrl+Shift+E) with fuzzy search across every action.
    • Workbook health report — flags inconsistent formulas, hardcoded values inside formulas, broken links, and risky patterns.
    • Compare workbooks — diff two files side-by-side, see exactly what changed.
    • Live PowerPoint data linking — paste Excel ranges into PowerPoint that stay synced.
    • 14-day free trial, no credit card. Suite licensing — one $20/mo subscription covers both ExcelSurge and SlideSurge.

SlideSurge

7 releases
  1. v1.1.0.102#
    • **New: Import Selection** — select cells in Excel, click once in PowerPoint, and they land on your slide as a live link, sized to fit and clear of the title. Refresh it, right-click Update it, or manage it in Manage Links like any other link. It's the pull counterpart to ExcelSurge's "Link to PowerPoint".
    • **New: installs keep themselves up to date** — from this version on, SlideSurge checks for a newer version when PowerPoint starts and updates itself automatically. No more downloading installers by hand.
    • **Fixed: Update now shows what *this* object changed from** — refreshing a linked object used to compare against whatever was last loaded anywhere, so a copy of the same link on another slide could make it report "unchanged" (or the wrong old value). Each object now remembers its own last values — and that memory is saved with the deck, so the comparison works even on the first refresh after reopening PowerPoint.
    • **Fixed: importing or refreshing no longer disturbs your Excel** — Excel could be left hidden (looking closed or frozen) after SlideSurge read from a workbook you had open, and in some cases an empty Excel window could be closed outright. Your Excel is now handed back exactly as it was found.
    • **Fixed: the Save Theme button no longer gets cut off** at the bottom of the Set Company Theme window.
  2. v1.1.0.96#
    • **New: Quick Colors** — replaces IB Colors on the ribbon with a compact popup for fill, outline or text, one click to apply. The palette is yours to edit: click a swatch to change it, right-click to remove, `+` to add.
    • **Set Company Theme is now a real editor** — name your theme, set heading and body fonts with size and bold, and pick every colour with a hex field or a colour picker. "Use Current Presentation" reads the open deck's fonts and colours into the fields, all still editable, and **Save Theme keeps it between sessions**.
    • **Themes understand more than "heading and body"** — SlideSurge now recognises slide titles, section headers, kicker labels, subheadings, body text, both bullet levels and footnote/source lines as separate styles, so applying a theme keeps a deck's hierarchy instead of flattening it.
    • **New: Deck Audit catches invisible text** — dark text on a dark shape or background is now flagged, including the near-unreadable cases, with wording that tells you when the text is effectively invisible.
    • **New: Snooze a finding** — hide something for 30 days when it isn't worth fixing now. Dismissals and snoozes carry over correctly between audits.
    • **A quieter, sharper audit** — hidden shapes no longer produce findings you can't act on, small "Source:" and footnote lines are no longer flagged as tiny text, and a new check spots titles that drift out of position between slides.
    • **Improved: clicking a finding goes to the exact shape** — even when several shapes on a slide share a name — and findings now show a snippet of the shape's text so you can tell them apart before clicking.
    • **Improved: tidier audit results** — empty slides, slides with speaker notes, and charts missing a source line each report as a single grouped finding instead of several near-identical cards.
    • **Change Source is faster and works with open files** — pick the new workbook and compatible links repoint straight away, with anything incompatible left alone and reported. You can now pick a workbook that's **already open in Excel**, without the "File in Use" prompt interrupting.
    • **Improved: linked Excel objects stay live** — an object pasted with Excel's Paste Link stays a live, double-clickable object after you change its source.
    • **Improved: links heal automatically** — when a rebuilt workbook is missing the hidden ranges links point at, SlideSurge repairs them for you.
    • **Refreshed pop-out windows** — Manage Links, Set Company Theme and the progress and confirmation dialogs now use the same accent colour as the rest of SlideSurge, with the SlideSurge mark in the title bar.
    • **Better audit PDF** — the exported report is redesigned to match ExcelSurge's, with a cover score ring, category cards, top issues and a methodology page.
  3. v1.1.0.78#
    • **Refreshed Deck Audit** — the audit pane now leads with a circular health-score ring (matching the ExcelSurge look), with the same finding cards, filters, and one-click fixes.
    • **Redesigned Manage Links** — a cleaner, easier-to-read dark layout with tinted status pills, a health summary (Healthy / Stale / Broken), per-workbook grouping, and a crisper typeface throughout.
    • **Improved: linked charts refresh reliably** — including charts from earlier exports.
    • **Right-click a linked object** for Update Link (refresh in place), Linked Worksheet Object (jump to the source range in Excel), and Change Source — mirroring Excel's own linked-object menu.
    • **Change Source is now one step** — pick the new workbook and the link repoints immediately, then simply asks whether to refresh; no separate confirmation.
    • Trace Source now jumps straight to the Excel source instead of leaving a marker box on the slide.
  4. v1.1.0.67#
    • **One-click update** — when a new version is available, the update notice now downloads and launches the installer for you directly, instead of just opening the download page.
    • **New: opt-in usage stats** — a Privacy setting (off by default) lets you share anonymous feature-usage data to help prioritize what gets built next. It only ever sends which feature ran — never any of your slide content.
    • **Improved: your preferences persist reliably between launches** — including the usage-stats choice above.
  5. v1.1.0.63#
    • New: First-run welcome that points you to the Command Palette, the shortcut library, and Deck Audit.
    • New: "Fix all safe" — normalize fonts, sizes, colors, and alignment across the whole deck in one click, with one-click Undo.
    • New: Claim checker — flags when a stated multiple or percentage doesn't match the figures (e.g. "grew 3x to $9M from $2M" is actually 4.5x), each as its own finding with the exact math.
    • New: one-click "Restore" to un-mark anything you marked as fixed.
    • Improved: sharper overlapping-text detection, faster Command Palette, and more reliable startup + install.
  6. v1.1.0.51#
    • **In-app update notifications** — SlideSurge now checks for a newer version on startup and shows a non-blocking notice when one is available, so you always know when there's an update.
  7. v1.1.0.40#
    • Suite licensing — one $20/mo subscription covers both SlideSurge and ExcelSurge.
    • Refreshed shortcut pane design.
    • Deck audit engine — flags off-grid shapes, inconsistent fonts, low-contrast text, missing alt-text, and other deck hygiene issues.
    • Compare decks — diff two PowerPoint files side-by-side.
    • Live Excel data linking on the PowerPoint side — paired with ExcelSurge's outbound linking.
    • Command palette (Ctrl+Shift+E) with fuzzy search, matching ExcelSurge.
    • Theme manager — apply consistent fonts, colors, and styles across an entire deck.
    • Shape utilities — alignment, distribution, and snap-to-grid that PowerPoint should have shipped with.
    • 14-day free trial, no credit card.