I was there. My job in the mid ‘80’s was as a product evangelist for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access on the Mac. The history as described was exactly as I remember it.
Thank you Boriana for your excellent article. I was the software person in one of the first computer retail shops in central London, used all these products, nice memories!
I was there during this time working as a SuperCalc Product Manager at Computer Associates :) SuperCalc was the main competitor to Lotus 123 and at one point would have 'ruled the waves' if CA had not delayed on the Windows version, which is what allowed Excel to come in and basically take over everything. Great times to be in the computing industry! :)
Since Windows 10 I’m not as big a Microsoft fan as I was for the previous 30 years, however no one touches their Office Suite. Yes you can do most things in IOS and other office suites such as Libre, but most things isn’t all things.
In this article on the history of Microsoft Excel, we have tried to trace everything important before and after its creation. It was written on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Excel: itraining.bg/excel-30-years-history/
I was an early user of Multiplan and Multimate, the genesis of Excel and Word. Sadly, those 2 early systems were diabolical and as a person with no computer knowledge they were difficult to learn. After only 6 weeks of trying to get our head around these two programs our boss dropped Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect on us and boy were we happy! Some years later I moved to a company that was exclusively an Office user so it was back to the Microsoft product. Thankfully, Excel and Word had morphed from the total rubbish of the "Multi" versions into the fabulous product it is today.
Charles Simonyi's creation of Excel is a work of a genius. But it was overshadowed by his father an even greater genius, who created the first high voltage accelerators, with the same name Charles Simonyi. He was my teacher and mentor in the 1970s on the Technical University of Budapest, teaching me theoretical electronics.
Long before Excel or Lotus 123, there was VisiCalc. It worked on the Apple II computer. Daniel Singer Bricklin (born July 16, 1951) is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix.[1] which he left in 2004.[2] He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software.[3] His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009.[4] For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often referred to as “the father of the Spreadsheet.”
My dad was an early adopter of Lotus Improv, which drastically changed spreadsheets. However it was so different, and of course Lotus was crap at marketing it never took off.
Some profesional Excel templates can be bought online, or those that match your regional tax requirements. If a new method is chosen by your president, you have to buy a new template or a new Excel.
I've worked in many engineering offices around the world and I've NEVER seen anyone doing their Excel spreadsheets in a "Cloud collaborative environment" on Microsoft's servers, or should I say NSA servers, but well tried.
MS office needs to quickly adapt to the UX needs of Gen Y and Gen Z. I see lots of improvements these days, still a long way to go else it will become redundant/obsolete.
I know this is an old comment, but could you specify some UX needs that are specific to Gens Y and Z? Are there alternatives to Excel that are satisfying these needs?
I think its stupid of Microsoft to have not integrated Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook into one seamless experience, they are asleep at the wheel.
It probably isn't "excellence" to cheat. More like underhanded shit. Microsoft used undocumented calls they created in their programming languages; but did not inform the software companies like Lotus and Wordstar about these calls so that Microsoft obtained a performance advantage. Given most of these companies made the kiler apps that made Microsoft OS popular and you'd think this might be counter productive; but their compeditors didn't pull their products and port them elswhere which would have been smarter than just being shit on. Had they moved their products to the Amiga; or some other platform Microsoft would have died.
Working for a company that mainly used WordPerfect office products during the early to mid 90's. The company was taken over by a growing US Corp. that forced us to change to the MS Office suite which proved to be wildly inferior in many areas and hence time had to be spent in writing VBA modules that brought mainly the word processing and spreadsheet offerings up to the level of quality that we were used to. The pushed move from Novell to NT also caused a number of headaches and days of unpaid overtime in that the Microsoft way of transferring data packets corrupted our main database forcing a total multiple days rebuild of the data tables and a sudden return to a Novell server along with a large bill for additional work from our maintenance contractors who had warned us about the issue before the company forced the move. Didn't help that the global company that we were contracted to also decided to move to NT as well during a European centralization process that also caused then too many headaches that they also had to delay the full implementation of the process until a solution could be found. It cost thousands and months to find a solution which involved moving to a new and very expensive database system. The contract company dropped the centralization project 3 years later when they found that it caused too many issues. All this taught me that those at the top who make the decisions can be woefully unsuitable to run a company as they lack the underlying ability to understand or find out what makes the company work and what products, services and processes will help to improve it or damage it. For the company I worked for, MS Office and NT were a sledge hammer of destruction and the CEO's and managers, with no IT knowledge, became the easy pray to the carpet baggers of the IT world. The recklessness of the US Corps CEO with his inability to listen or take time to understand our clients, his "know it all" stance, and general lack of experience lost us not only the business of the contract company that I worked with but also numerous other contracts as well. Thankfully, having seen the writing on the wall, I had moved on by that time. Thankfully, so has MS Office and Windows Server and desktop products. I stopped pulling my hair out so much after the implementation of Windows 7 and MS Server 2008 and even less now with Office 2016. Now it's someone else's problem.
My story exactly. Taking a law firm from DOS+Wordperfect+Novell to a fully Microsoft environment involved no shortage of all-nighters and hair loss. In the end though it put them ahead of other firms in the inevitable transition to an MS world.
I feel your pain. It seems every time we get settled into one way of doing things someone comes along with changes that promise to revolutionize the way we work. Then after years of time and money to switch over, train and get settled back to one standard again a new person comes along with the next bright idea. I can't tell if it is management trying to shave minutes off a process in order save on labor or IT trying to push these solutions to keep themselves employed 🤣
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I was there. My job in the mid ‘80’s was as a product evangelist for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Access on the Mac. The history as described was exactly as I remember it.
Would like to hear more stories.
hey sir. can i contact you?
Hi Trevor, here we tried to overview the history of Excel, maybe will be interesting for you :-) itraining.bg/excel-30-years-history/
Wo, glad to know you. Could you tell some more stories ?
Thank you Boriana for your excellent article. I was the software person in one of the first computer retail shops in central London, used all these products, nice memories!
I was there during this time working as a SuperCalc Product Manager at Computer Associates :) SuperCalc was the main competitor to Lotus 123 and at one point would have 'ruled the waves' if CA had not delayed on the Windows version, which is what allowed Excel to come in and basically take over everything. Great times to be in the computing industry! :)
Do you know why they delayed?
@@Ratkwad I can't actually remember, but I think it was just delayed marketing and launching of the product.
These are real pioneers and heros.
“Heros”? Really
Since Windows 10 I’m not as big a Microsoft fan as I was for the previous 30 years, however no one touches their Office Suite. Yes you can do most things in IOS and other office suites such as Libre, but most things isn’t all things.
Dan Bricklin invented the spreadsheet in 1979 with Visicalc. It was a monumental landmark in computing history, the first "killer app"!
Today, wtih Power Query, which inside Excel, all data manipulation is now possible. Good job folks (and i'm an R user...) !
no regex in pq :(
In this article on the history of Microsoft Excel, we have tried to trace everything important before and after its creation. It was written on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Excel: itraining.bg/excel-30-years-history/
Thanks for posting this!
I was an early user of Multiplan and Multimate, the genesis of Excel and Word. Sadly, those 2 early systems were diabolical and as a person with no computer knowledge they were difficult to learn.
After only 6 weeks of trying to get our head around these two programs our boss dropped Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect on us and boy were we happy!
Some years later I moved to a company that was exclusively an Office user so it was back to the Microsoft product.
Thankfully, Excel and Word had morphed from the total rubbish of the "Multi" versions into the fabulous product it is today.
Charles Simonyi's creation of Excel is a work of a genius.
But it was overshadowed by his father an even greater genius, who created the first high voltage accelerators, with the same name Charles Simonyi.
He was my teacher and mentor in the 1970s on the Technical University of Budapest, teaching me theoretical electronics.
Long before Excel or Lotus 123, there was VisiCalc. It worked on the Apple II computer.
Daniel Singer Bricklin (born July 16, 1951) is an American businessman and engineer who is the co-creator, with Bob Frankston, of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. He also founded Software Garden, Inc., of which he is currently president, and Trellix.[1] which he left in 2004.[2] He currently serves as the chief technology officer of Alpha Software.[3]
His book, Bricklin on Technology, was published by Wiley in May 2009.[4] For his work with VisiCalc, Bricklin is often referred to as “the father of the Spreadsheet.”
An early Microsoft Press book has some fine interviews of the spreadsheet pioneers and other visionaries
My dad was an early adopter of Lotus Improv, which drastically changed spreadsheets. However it was so different, and of course Lotus was crap at marketing it never took off.
New Sub! Dryden, Michigan, US
Well Done. Nice Edit!!
Excel was not new and was built upon the shoulders of the original speadsheet software of Visicalc and Supercalc.
Thank You ... Merci ... For the historical perspective!!!
A complete calculator was built in software. Inside a presentation. Later Oracle. Extreme huge numbers use table extracts calculations. Or map ratio.
25 years old code? This explaines, why the same bugs are still happening since firt usage.
Excel VBA is really fast...a acdc video!!!
Some profesional Excel templates can be bought online, or those that match your regional tax requirements. If a new method is chosen by your president, you have to buy a new template or a new Excel.
The music is excellent. I need to know more.
Starts off good then turns into an ad.
30 years or development and it still can't count colours...
Excel is one of the last few good MS products left. Most everything else is becoming pretty much messed up and half-baked.
they have visual studio, outlook, c#, typescript, vs code
@@Sonrithi Power BI as well. Tableau might be better and MS might be greedy about it, but it's actually a pretty good tool.
Wow...
I've worked in many engineering offices around the world and I've NEVER seen anyone doing their Excel spreadsheets in a "Cloud collaborative environment" on Microsoft's servers, or should I say NSA servers, but well tried.
But you will! 😁
The company I work for uses a cloud collaborative environment almost exclusively with excel.
I do. We have files on SharePoint. We can open the desktop and make changes to the one sheet. We’d use it for tracking multiple projects.
I do everyday, have for several years.
@@williamenser same
interesting!
If means splitting. While means zoning. Search.
No todo es así, lotus ya existía y otro programa de bordland creo le antecedieron y eran muy buenos, de Gates se habla mucho de los posibles plagios
I refuse to use Office 365. I'm quite content with my super capable Excel 2007. In 2023.
You're missing out.
MS office needs to quickly adapt to the UX needs of Gen Y and Gen Z. I see lots of improvements these days, still a long way to go else it will become redundant/obsolete.
I know this is an old comment, but could you specify some UX needs that are specific to Gens Y and Z? Are there alternatives to Excel that are satisfying these needs?
I think its stupid of Microsoft to have not integrated Word, Excel, Power Point and Outlook into one seamless experience, they are asleep at the wheel.
Lotus and visicalc and others ignored windows and were too late reacting
❤
Yeah. I remember Excel 1. Like Word 1. WHAT A JOKE. It was horrid.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
It probably isn't "excellence" to cheat. More like underhanded shit. Microsoft used undocumented calls they created in their programming languages; but did not inform the software companies like Lotus and Wordstar about these calls so that Microsoft obtained a performance advantage. Given most of these companies made the kiler apps that made Microsoft OS popular and you'd think this might be counter productive; but their compeditors didn't pull their products and port them elswhere which would have been smarter than just being shit on. Had they moved their products to the Amiga; or some other platform Microsoft would have died.
It is now the industry standard. Until...
Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc: Allow us to introduce ourselves.
Competitors yes, but not in the same league when it comes to market share.
The greatest thief in the history of software and one of his ill gotten gains
Working for a company that mainly used WordPerfect office products during the early to mid 90's. The company was taken over by a growing US Corp. that forced us to change to the MS Office suite which proved to be wildly inferior in many areas and hence time had to be spent in writing VBA modules that brought mainly the word processing and spreadsheet offerings up to the level of quality that we were used to. The pushed move from Novell to NT also caused a number of headaches and days of unpaid overtime in that the Microsoft way of transferring data packets corrupted our main database forcing a total multiple days rebuild of the data tables and a sudden return to a Novell server along with a large bill for additional work from our maintenance contractors who had warned us about the issue before the company forced the move. Didn't help that the global company that we were contracted to also decided to move to NT as well during a European centralization process that also caused then too many headaches that they also had to delay the full implementation of the process until a solution could be found. It cost thousands and months to find a solution which involved moving to a new and very expensive database system. The contract company dropped the centralization project 3 years later when they found that it caused too many issues. All this taught me that those at the top who make the decisions can be woefully unsuitable to run a company as they lack the underlying ability to understand or find out what makes the company work and what products, services and processes will help to improve it or damage it. For the company I worked for, MS Office and NT were a sledge hammer of destruction and the CEO's and managers, with no IT knowledge, became the easy pray to the carpet baggers of the IT world. The recklessness of the US Corps CEO with his inability to listen or take time to understand our clients, his "know it all" stance, and general lack of experience lost us not only the business of the contract company that I worked with but also numerous other contracts as well. Thankfully, having seen the writing on the wall, I had moved on by that time. Thankfully, so has MS Office and Windows Server and desktop products. I stopped pulling my hair out so much after the implementation of Windows 7 and MS Server 2008 and even less now with Office 2016. Now it's someone else's problem.
My story exactly. Taking a law firm from DOS+Wordperfect+Novell to a fully Microsoft environment involved no shortage of all-nighters and hair loss. In the end though it put them ahead of other firms in the inevitable transition to an MS world.
I feel your pain. It seems every time we get settled into one way of doing things someone comes along with changes that promise to revolutionize the way we work. Then after years of time and money to switch over, train and get settled back to one standard again a new person comes along with the next bright idea. I can't tell if it is management trying to shave minutes off a process in order save on labor or IT trying to push these solutions to keep themselves employed 🤣