gotta say I like the search thingy they put in there where you can just type what you want instead of digging through menus, especially for lesser used features.

Basically the idea of a command palette, although less prominent, I guess. And yes, it's the way to actually use the office suite in general instead of messing around with the ribbon.

I can't agree with this when they've so recently added XLOOKUP https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/xlookup-function-...

Unless that was sarcasm and I'm whooshing, I really don't get the big deal about xlookup. It's like vlookup but I'm no longer forced to have the lookup column as the first column in the range? I mean, that's nice, it makes my workflows one or steps shorter, but it's hardly groundbreaking.

Mildly sarcastic. But it's much more sane than VLOOKUP which makes it feel like a big feature to people like me who always hated VLOOKUP.

What happens if you insert a column in the table you’re VLOKKUPING? It breaks :)

There have been a fair few changes that make a large difference if you care about that thing, but nothing earth shattering for all. Being able too define an arbitrary number of dynamic forgetting rules (where there was a fairly strict limit previously) is one change that I really appreciate. I'm sure there are many other such changes that appeal to other people's user of the thing.