Microsoft on Thursday announced some Excel and Power BI enhancements that add 'connected data types' on top of the standard strings and numbers options.

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You can convert text in Excel to linked data types. This is referred to as “linked” data types because the data is connected to an online data source.

Now Excel is going 3D: Data types let any cell contain a rich set of structured data that can be updated directly from a live data source.

The first two of these data types, stocks and geography, will allow Excel to recognize automatically recognize a place or stock and serve up a rich set of data for it.

Microsoft is bringing custom data types to Excel. Businesses and consumers will be able to import structured data into a single cell and reference it throughout a spreadsheet.