Microsoft Excel is a popular spreadsheet program that was developed by Microsoft. It’s compatible with computers running the Windows operating system. However, it can also work on Mac OS-based computers. It offers a user-friendly interface with many tools that makes creating spreadsheets quick and easy. This combined with a powerful marketing campaign, has made Excel one of the most popular software programs in the world. Excel is often part of the Microsoft Office program suite. Excel is not the first spreadsheet program to be produced by Microsoft. Multiplan was the first spreadsheet program that Microsoft released in 1982. But, Multiplan lost its market share after Lotus 1-2-3 was released. Microsoft wanted to develop a spreadsheet application that could be competitive with Lotus 1-2-3. The very first version of Excel was introduced in 1985 and was available on the Mac.
The second version of Windows would come out two years later. Excel started to take a bigger share of this market, mainly because Lotus failed to bring its spreadsheet program to Windows in a timely manner. Excel had already surpassed 1-2-3 by 1988, which is one reason why Microsoft has been so successful as a software company. Excel 11 is the current version. This software is part the Microsoft Office 2003 bundle. The file format for Excel files is.xls. While there are many ways to modify the interface of Excel, the GUI will remain the same: rows and cells. Information can be placed inside cells. This will affect the data in other cell. Excel offers a lot of control over how cells look and what information is stored in them. Excel is the basis of Microsoft Word as well as PowerPoint.
Visual Basic is an integral part Excel’s 1993 development environment. Visual Basic allowed for many tasks to be automated with Excel’s introduction. However, macro viruses could be created because of the automated properties in Excel with Visual Basic. Most of these viruses are now blocked though standard antivirus programs can block many of them. Microsoft allows users to disable macros, which has almost eliminated the problem. Microsoft Excel wasn’t well-known until the late 1980s. Today, however, it is the most widely used spreadsheet tool. Google, for example, is challenging it. Microsoft Excel has been a success despite this. It is the most widely used software package in the world, second only to Windows. It can be used for graphing and calculation, as well as has great tools. Multiplan, the predecessor to the software, would have made the software more dominant. If you are looking for additional info on excel basics, explore the previously mentioned website.
