Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program included in the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Spreadsheets will provide you with the values arranged in rows and columns that can be changed mathematically using both basic and complex arithmetic operations. In addition to the standard spreadsheet features, Excel offers programming support via Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the ability to access data from external sources via Microsoft's Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). Microsoft Excel is an Electronic Spreadsheet Computer Program.
What is Excel VBA? VBA stands for Visual Basic for Applications. Excel VBA is Microsoft's programming language for Excel Excel Definition Excel definition: software program by Microsoft that uses spreadsheets to organize numbers and data with formulas and functions. Excel definition: software program by Microsoft that uses spreadsheets to organize numbers and data with formulas and functions. Excel analysis is ubiquitous around the world and used by businesses of all sizes to perform financial analysis.
Microsoft Excel was first released for Macintosh systems in the year 1985, followed by the first Windows version in 1987. Check the list to know about the Excel releases for Windows:
Excel 2.0 (1987)
Excel 3.0 (1990)
Excel 4.0 (1992) - Included in Microsoft Office 3.0
Excel 5.0 (1993) - Included in Microsoft Office 4.0
Excel 95 (1995) - Included in Microsoft Office 95
Excel 97 (1997) - Included in Microsoft Office 97
Excel 2000 (2000) - Included in Microsoft Office 2000
Excel 2002 (2002) - Included in Microsoft Office XP
Excel 2003 (2003) - Included in Microsoft Office 2003
Excel 2007 (2007) - Included in Microsoft Office 2007
Excel 2010 (2010) - Included in Microsoft Office 2010
Excel 2013 (2013) - Included in Microsoft Office 2013
History of Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel) is a spreadsheet program written and distributed by Microsoft for computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system and for Apple Macintosh computers. It features an intuitive interface and capable calculation and graphing tools which, along with aggressive marketing, have made Excel one of the most popular microcomputer applications to date. It is overwhelmingly the dominant spreadsheet application available for these platforms and has been so since version 5 in 1993 and its bundling as part of Microsoft Office.
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History
Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982, which was very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. This promoted development of a new spreadsheet called Excel which started with the intention to, in the words of Doug Klunder, 'do everything 1-2-3 does and do it better'.
The first version of Excel was released for the Mac in 1985 and the first Windows version (numbered 2.0 to line-up with the Mac and bundled with a run-time Windows environment) was released in November 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by 1988 Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve the position of leading PC software developer. This accomplishment, dethroning the king of the software world, solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing graphical software. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so. The current version for the Windows platform is Excel 11, also called Microsoft Office Excel 2003. The current version for the Mac OS X platform is Microsoft Excel 2004.
Early in its life Excel became the target of a trademark lawsuit by another company already selling a software package named 'Excel' in the finance industry. As the result of the dispute Microsoft was required to refer to the program as 'Microsoft Excel' in all of its formal press releases and legal documents. However, over time this practice has been ignored, and Microsoft cleared up the issue permanently when they purchased the trademark to the other program. Microsoft also encouraged the use of the letters XL as shorthand for the program; while this is no longer common, the program's icon still consists of a stylised combination of the two letters, and the file extension of the default Excel format is .xls.
Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc: the cells are organised in rows and columns, and contain data or formulas with relative or absolute references to other cells.
Excel was the first spreadsheet that allowed the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell recomputation, where only cells dependent on the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). Excel has extensive graphing capabilities.
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Early in its life Excel became the target of a trademark lawsuit by another company already selling a software package named 'Excel' in the finance industry. As the result of the dispute Microsoft was required to refer to the program as 'Microsoft Excel' in all of its formal press releases and legal documents. However, over time this practice has been ignored, and Microsoft cleared up the issue permanently when they purchased the trademark to the other program. Microsoft also encouraged the use of the letters XL as shorthand for the program; while this is no longer common, the program's icon still consists of a stylised combination of the two letters, and the file extension of the default Excel format is .xls.
Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet, VisiCalc: the cells are organised in rows and columns, and contain data or formulas with relative or absolute references to other cells.
Excel was the first spreadsheet that allowed the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell recomputation, where only cells dependent on the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed everything all the time or waited for a specific user command). Excel has extensive graphing capabilities.
When first bundled into Microsoft Office in 1993, Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint had their GUIs redesigned for consistency with Excel, the killer app on the PC at the time.
Since 1993, Excel has included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming language based on Visual Basic which adds the ability to automate tasks in Excel and to provide user defined functions (UDF) for use in worksheets. VBA is a powerful addition to the application which, in later versions, includes a fully featured integrated development environment (IDE). Macro recording can produce VBA code replicating user actions, thus allowing simple automation of regular tasks. VBA allows the creation of forms and in-worksheet controls to communicate with the user. The language supports use (but not creation) of ActiveX (COM) DLL's; later versions add support for class modules allowing the use of basic object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques.
The automation functionality provided by VBA has caused Excel to become a target for macro viruses. This was a serious problem in the corporate world until antivirus products began to detect these viruses. Microsoft belatedly took steps to prevent the misuse by adding the ability to disable macros completely, to enable macros when opening a workbook or to trust all macros signed using a trusted certificate.
Versions 5.0 to 9.0 of Excel contain various Easter eggs, although since version 10 Microsoft has taken measures to eliminate such undocumented features from their products. [TOP]
Versions
Versions for Microsoft Windows include:
2007 Excel 12.0 (Office 2007, Available currently as a Beta from the Microsoft Office Excel Site)
Versions for the Apple Macintosh include:
1985 Excel 1.0
1988 Excel 1.5
1989 Excel 2.2
1990 Excel 3.0
3d shape builder online. 1992 Excel 4.0
1993 Excel 5.0
1998 Excel 8.0 (Office '98)
2000 Excel 9.0 (Office 2001)
2001 Excel 10.0 (Office v. X)
2004 Excel 11.0 (Office 2004)
Versions for OS/2 include:
What Is Microsoft Excel
1989 Excel 2.2
1991 Excel 3.0
