What is microsoft excel 2012

Содержание

  1. Microsoft Excel
  2. What Does Microsoft Excel Mean?
  3. Techopedia Explains Microsoft Excel
  4. History and Future of MS Excel
  5. What is Microsoft Excel and What Does It Do?
  6. What Excel Is Used For
  7. Spreadsheet Cells and Cell References
  8. Data Types, Formulas, and Functions
  9. Excel and Financial Data
  10. Excel’s Other Uses
  11. Excel Alternatives
  12. Microsoft Wiki
  13. Microsoft Excel
  14. Microsoft Excel
  15. Developer
  16. Released
  17. Latest release version
  18. Licensing
  19. Price
  20. Operating system
  21. Platform
  22. Website
  23. Contents
  24. History
  25. Early history
  26. Versions
  27. File formats
  28. Microsoft Excel 2007 Office Open XML formats
  29. Exporting and Migration of spreadsheets
  30. Criticism
  31. Errors in Excel 2007

Microsoft Excel

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects simply to a non-technical, business audience. Over…

What Does Microsoft Excel Mean?

Microsoft Excel is a software program produced by Microsoft that allows users to organize, format and calculate data with formulas using a spreadsheet system.

This software is part of the Microsoft Office suite and is compatible with other applications in the Office suite. Like other Microsoft Office products, Microsoft Excel can now be purchased through the cloud on a subscription basis through Office 365.

Techopedia Explains Microsoft Excel

MS Excel is a commercial spreadsheet application that is produced and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS operating systems. It features the ability to perform basic calculations, use graphing tools, create pivot tables and create macros, among other useful features.

Spreadsheet applications such as MS Excel use a collection of cells arranged into rows and columns to organize and manipulate data. They can also display data as charts, histograms and line graphs.

MS Excel permits users to arrange data in order to view various factors from different perspectives. Microsoft Visual Basic is a programming language used for applications in Excel, allowing users to create a variety of complex numerical methods. Programmers are given an option to code directly using the Visual Basic Editor, including Windows for writing code, debugging and code module organization.

History and Future of MS Excel

In the early days of accessible PC business computing, Microsoft Excel played a central role in bookkeeping and record-keeping for enterprise operations.

One of the best examples of a use case for MS Excel is a table with an autosum format.

It’s very easy in Microsoft Excel to simply enter a column of values and click into a cell at the bottom of the spreadsheet, and then click the “autosum” button to allow that cell to add up all of the numbers entered above. This takes the place of the manual ledger counts that had been a labor-intensive part of business previous to the evolution of the modern spreadsheet.

The autosum and other innovations have made MS Excel a must-have for various kinds of enterprise computing, including looking at daily, weekly or monthly numbers, tabulating payroll and taxes, and other kinds of similar business processes.

Various types of simple use cases made Microsoft Excel a key end-user technology as well, useful in training and professional development. For a number of years, MS Excel has been included in basic business diploma courses on business computing, and temporary work agencies may assess individuals on their skills with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel for a wide range of clerical duties.

However, as the world of business technology has advanced, Microsoft Excel has become largely obsolete in some ways.

The reason for this is a concept called “visual dashboard” technology or “data visualization.”

Generally, companies and vendors have come up with neat new ways to present data visually that do not involve end users looking at a traditional spreadsheet with columns of numbers and identifiers. Instead, they look at graphs and charts and other sophisticated presentations, to understand the numbers better and more quickly. People have realized that the visual presentation is far easier to “read.”

The principle of data visualization has shifted the use cases for Microsoft Excel. Where businesses may have used Microsoft Excel in the past for, say, hundreds of records, most of today’s business use cases involve spreadsheets that handle less than a few dozen values for any particular project.

The idea is that if the spreadsheet is longer than a couple of dozen rows, it will be more effective to display the information on a visual dashboard than in a traditional spreadsheet format.

Источник

What is Microsoft Excel and What Does It Do?

This versatile program helps you make sense of your data

Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that is used for storing, organizing, and manipulating data.

The information we’ve prepared refers to Microsoft Excel in general and is not limited to any specific version of the program.

What Excel Is Used For

Electronic spreadsheet programs were originally based on paper spreadsheets used for accounting. As such, the basic layout of computerized spreadsheets is the same as the paper ones. Related data is stored in tables — which are a collection of small rectangular boxes or cells organized into rows and columns.

All versions of Excel and other spreadsheet programs can store several spreadsheet pages in a single computer file. The saved computer file is often referred to as a workbook and each page in the workbook is a separate worksheet.

Spreadsheet Cells and Cell References

When you look at the Excel screen — or any other spreadsheet screen — you see a rectangular table or grid of rows and columns.

In newer versions of Excel, each worksheet contains roughly a million rows and more than 16,000 columns, which necessitates an addressing scheme in order to keep track of where data is located.

The horizontal rows are identified by numbers (1, 2, 3) and the vertical columns by letters of the alphabet (A, B, C). For columns beyond 26, columns are identified by two or more letters such as AA, AB, AC or AAA, AAB, etc.

The intersection point between a column and a row is the small rectangular box known as a cell. The cell is the basic unit for storing data in the worksheet, and because each worksheet contains millions of these cells, each one is identified by its cell reference.

A cell reference is a combination of the column letter and the row number such as A3, B6, and AA345. In these cell references, the column letter is always listed first.

Data Types, Formulas, and Functions

The types of data that a cell can hold include:

  • Numbers
  • Text
  • Dates and times
  • Boolean values
  • Formulas

Formulas are used for calculations — usually incorporating data contained in other cells. These cells, however, may be located on different worksheets or in different workbooks.

Creating a formula starts by entering the equal sign in the cell where you want the answer displayed. Formulas can also include cell references to the location of data and one or more spreadsheet functions.

Functions in Excel and other electronic spreadsheets are built-in formulas that are designed to simplify carrying out a wide range of calculations – from common operations such as entering the date or time to more complex ones such as finding specific information located in large tables of data.

Excel and Financial Data

Spreadsheets are often used to store financial data. Formulas and functions that are used on this type of data include:

  • Performing basic mathematical operations such as summing columns or rows of numbers
  • Finding values such as profit or loss
  • Calculating repayment plans for loans or mortgages
  • Finding the average, maximum, minimum and other statistical values in a specified range of data
  • Carrying out What-If analysis on data, where variables are modified one at a time to see how the change affects other data, such as expenses and profits

Excel’s Other Uses

Other common operations that Excel can be used for include:

  • Graphing or charting data to assist users in identifying data trends
  • Formatting data to make important data easy to find and understand
  • Printing data and charts for use in reports
  • Sorting and filtering data to find specific information
  • Linking worksheet data and charts for use in other programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint and Word
  • Importing data from database programs for analysis

Spreadsheets were the original «killer apps» for personal computers because of their ability to compile and make sense of information. Early spreadsheet programs such as VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 were largely responsible for the growth in popularity of computers like the Apple II and the IBM PC as a business tool.

Excel Alternatives

Other current spreadsheet programs that are available for use include:

  • Google Sheets: A free, web-based spreadsheet program
  • Excel Online: A free, scaled-down, web-based version of Excel
  • Open Office Calc: A free, downloadable spreadsheet program.

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Источник

Microsoft Wiki

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Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel

Developer

Released

Latest release version

Licensing

Price

Operating system

Platform

Website

Contents

History

Early 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. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with Macintosh version 2.2) on November 19, 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by the early 1990s, 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 GUI software. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so.

Microsoft Excel 2.1 included a runtime version of Windows 2.1

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 of 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 on Windows still consists of a stylized 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 organized 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 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.

Versions

‘Excel 97’ (8.0) being run on Windows XP

Microsoft Excel 2003 running under Windows XP Home Edition

Excel 2003 icon

Versions for Microsoft Windows include:

  • 1987 Excel 2 for Windows*
  • 1990 Excel 3
  • 1992 Excel 4 included in Microsoft Office 3.0
  • 1993 Excel 5 (Office 4.2 & 4.3, also a 32-bit version for Windows NT only on the PowerPC, DEC Alpha, and MIPS)
  • 1995 Excel for Windows 95 (version 7) included in Microsoft Office 95*
  • 1997 Excel 97 (version 8) included in Microsoft Office 97 (x86 and also a DEC Alpha version)
  • 1999 Excel 2000 (version 9) included in Microsoft Office 2000
  • 2001 Excel 2002 (version 10) included in Microsoft Office XP
  • 2003 Excel 2003 (version 11) included in Microsoft Office 2003
  • 2007 Excel 2007 (version 12) included in Microsoft Office 2007
  • 2010 Excel 2010 (version 14) included in Microsoft Office 2010
  • 2012 Excel 2013 (version 15) included in Microsoft Office 2013
  • 2015 Excel 2016 (version 16) included in Microsoft Office 2016
  • 2018 Excel 2019 (version 16) included in Microsoft Office 2019
  • 2021 Excel 2021 (version 16) included in Microsoft Office 2021

Note: There is no Excel 1.0, in order to avoid confusion with Apple versions. Note: There is no Excel 6.0, because the Windows 95 version was launched with Word 7. All the Office 95 & Office 4.X products have OLE 2 capacity — moving data automatically from various programs — and Excel 7 should show that it was contemporary with Word 7.

Versions for the Apple Macintosh include:

Versions for OS/2 include:

  • 1989 Excel 2.2
  • 1990 Excel 2.3
  • 1991 Excel 3.0

File formats

Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) as its primary format. Excel 2007 uses Office Open XML as its primary file format, an XML-based container similar in design to XML-based format called «XML Spreadsheet» («XMLSS»), first introduced in Excel 2002. The latter format is not able to encode VBA macros.

Although supporting and encouraging the use of new XML-based formats as replacements, Excel 2007 is still backwards compatible with the traditional, binary, formats. In addition, most versions of Microsoft Excel are able to read CSV , DBF , SYLK, DIF , and other legacy formats.

Microsoft Excel 2007 Office Open XML formats

Microsoft Excel 2007, along with the other products in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, introduces a host of new file formats. These are part of the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.

The new Excel 2007 formats are:

Excel Workbook (.xlsx) The default Excel 2007 workbook format. In reality a ZIP compressed archive with a directory structure of XML text documents. Functions as the primary replacement for the former binary .xls format, although it does not support Excel macros for security reasons. Excel Macro-enabled Workbook (.xlsm) As Excel Workbook, but with macro support. Excel Binary Workbook (.xlsb) As Excel Macro-enabled Workbook, but storing information in binary form rather than XML documents for opening and saving documents more quickly and efficiently. Intended especially for very large documents with tens of thousands of rows, and/or several hundreds of columns. Excel Macro-enabled Template (.xltm) A template document that forms a basis for actual workbooks, with macro support. The replacement for the old .xlt format. Excel Add-in (.xlam) Excel add-in to add extra functionality and tools. Inherent macro support due to the file purpose.

Exporting and Migration of spreadsheets

APIs are also provided to open excel spreadsheets in a variety of other applications and environments other than Microsoft Excel. These include opening excel documents on the web using either ActiveX controls,or plugins like the Adobe Flash Player. Attempts have also been made to be able to copy excel spreadsheets to web applications using comma-separated values].

Criticism

Due to Excel’s foundation on floating point calculations, the statistical accuracy of Excel has been criticized, as has the lack of certain statistical tools. Excel proponents have responded that some of these errors represent edge cases and that the relatively few users who would be affected by these know of them and have workarounds and alternatives.

Excel incorrectly assumes that 1900 is a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and was implemented in Excel for the purpose of backward compatibility. This legacy has later been carried over into Office Open XML file format. Excel also supports the second date format based on year 1904 epoch.

Criticisms of spreadsheets in general also apply significantly to Excel. See Spreadsheet shortcomings.

Errors in Excel 2007

Screen shot of Microsoft Excel 2007 showing the 65,535 display error

On September 22, 2007 it was reported that Excel 2007 will show incorrect results in certain situations. Specifically, for some pairs of numbers with a product of 65,535 (such as 850 and 77.1), Excel will report their product as 100,000. This occurs with about 14.5% of such pairs. In addition, if one is added to this result, Excel will give 100,001. However, if one is subtracted from the original product, the correct result of 65,534 is reported. (Also if it is multiplied or divided by 2, the correct answers 131,070 and 32,767.5 are reported, respectively.)

Microsoft has reported on the Microsoft Excel Blog that the problem exists in the display of six specific floating point values between 65534.99999999995 and 65,535, and six values between 65535.99999999995 and 65,536 (not including the integers). Any calculation that results in one of these twelve values will be displayed incorrectly. The actual value stored and passed to other cells is correct, only the displayed value is wrong. However, some instances, such as rounding the value to zero decimal places, will result in an incorrect value in memory. The error was introduced with changes made to the Excel calculation logic for the 2007 version, and does not exist in previous versions. On October 9, 2007, Microsoft released a fix to the public. Chris Lomont presented a detailed explanation of the bug, how it was likely caused by changing 16-bit formatting code to 32-bit code, why it only affects 12 values and then only while formatting, and how the hotfix corrects the bug.

Источник

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel forms part of the Microsoft 365 suite of software.

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Office Excel (2019–present).svg
Microsoft Excel.png

A simple bar graph being created in Excel, running on Windows 11

Developer(s) Microsoft
Initial release November 19, 1987; 35 years ago
Stable release

2103 (16.0.13901.20400)
/ April 13, 2021; 23 months ago[1]

Written in C++ (back-end)[2]
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type Spreadsheet
License Trialware[3]
Website microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/excel
Microsoft Excel for Mac

Excel for Mac screenshot.png

Excel for Mac (version 16.67), running on macOS Big Sur 11.5.2

Developer(s) Microsoft
Initial release September 30, 1985; 37 years ago
Stable release

16.70 (Build 23021201)
/ February 14, 2023; 54 days ago[4]

Written in C++ (back-end), Objective-C (API/UI)[2]
Operating system macOS
Type Spreadsheet
License Proprietary commercial software
Website products.office.com/mac
Microsoft Excel for Android

Excel for Android.png

Excel for Android running on Android 13

Developer(s) Microsoft Corporation
Stable release

16.0.14729.20146
/ December 22, 2021; 15 months ago[5]

Operating system Android Oreo and later
Type Spreadsheet
License Proprietary commercial software
Website products.office.com/en-us/excel
Microsoft Excel for iOS and iPadOS

Developer(s) Microsoft Corporation
Stable release

2.70.1
/ February 15, 2023; 53 days ago[6]

Operating system iOS 15 or later
iPadOS 15 or later
Type Spreadsheet
License Proprietary commercial software
Website products.office.com/en-us/excel

Features

Basic operation

Microsoft Excel has the basic features of all spreadsheets,[7] using a grid of cells arranged in numbered rows and letter-named columns to organize data manipulations like arithmetic operations. It has a battery of supplied functions to answer statistical, engineering, and financial needs. In addition, it can display data as line graphs, histograms and charts, and with a very limited three-dimensional graphical display. It allows sectioning of data to view its dependencies on various factors for different perspectives (using pivot tables and the scenario manager).[8] A PivotTable is a tool for data analysis. It does this by simplifying large data sets via PivotTable fields. It has a programming aspect, Visual Basic for Applications, allowing the user to employ a wide variety of numerical methods, for example, for solving differential equations of mathematical physics,[9][10] and then reporting the results back to the spreadsheet. It also has a variety of interactive features allowing user interfaces that can completely hide the spreadsheet from the user, so the spreadsheet presents itself as a so-called application, or decision support system (DSS), via a custom-designed user interface, for example, a stock analyzer,[11] or in general, as a design tool that asks the user questions and provides answers and reports.[12][13] In a more elaborate realization, an Excel application can automatically poll external databases and measuring instruments using an update schedule,[14] analyze the results, make a Word report or PowerPoint slide show, and e-mail these presentations on a regular basis to a list of participants. Excel was not designed to be used as a database.[citation needed]

Microsoft allows for a number of optional command-line switches to control the manner in which Excel starts.[15]

Functions

Excel 2016 has 484 functions.[16] Of these, 360 existed prior to Excel 2010. Microsoft classifies these functions in 14 categories. Of the 484 current functions, 386 may be called from VBA as methods of the object «WorksheetFunction»[17] and 44 have the same names as VBA functions.[18]

With the introduction of LAMBDA, Excel will become Turing complete.[19]

Macro programming

VBA programming

Use of a user-defined function sq(x) in Microsoft Excel. The named variables x & y are identified in the Name Manager. The function sq is introduced using the Visual Basic editor supplied with Excel.

Subroutine in Excel calculates the square of named column variable x read from the spreadsheet, and writes it into the named column variable y.

The Windows version of Excel supports programming through Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is a dialect of Visual Basic. Programming with VBA allows spreadsheet manipulation that is awkward or impossible with standard spreadsheet techniques. Programmers may write code directly using the Visual Basic Editor (VBE), which includes a window for writing code, debugging code, and code module organization environment. The user can implement numerical methods as well as automating tasks such as formatting or data organization in VBA[20] and guide the calculation using any desired intermediate results reported back to the spreadsheet.

VBA was removed from Mac Excel 2008, as the developers did not believe that a timely release would allow porting the VBA engine natively to Mac OS X. VBA was restored in the next version, Mac Excel 2011,[21] although the build lacks support for ActiveX objects, impacting some high level developer tools.[22]

A common and easy way to generate VBA code is by using the Macro Recorder.[23] The Macro Recorder records actions of the user and generates VBA code in the form of a macro. These actions can then be repeated automatically by running the macro. The macros can also be linked to different trigger types like keyboard shortcuts, a command button or a graphic. The actions in the macro can be executed from these trigger types or from the generic toolbar options. The VBA code of the macro can also be edited in the VBE. Certain features such as loop functions and screen prompt by their own properties, and some graphical display items, cannot be recorded but must be entered into the VBA module directly by the programmer. Advanced users can employ user prompts to create an interactive program, or react to events such as sheets being loaded or changed.

Macro Recorded code may not be compatible with Excel versions. Some code that is used in Excel 2010 cannot be used in Excel 2003. Making a Macro that changes the cell colors and making changes to other aspects of cells may not be backward compatible.

VBA code interacts with the spreadsheet through the Excel Object Model,[24] a vocabulary identifying spreadsheet objects, and a set of supplied functions or methods that enable reading and writing to the spreadsheet and interaction with its users (for example, through custom toolbars or command bars and message boxes). User-created VBA subroutines execute these actions and operate like macros generated using the macro recorder, but are more flexible and efficient.

History

From its first version Excel supported end-user programming of macros (automation of repetitive tasks) and user-defined functions (extension of Excel’s built-in function library). In early versions of Excel, these programs were written in a macro language whose statements had formula syntax and resided in the cells of special-purpose macro sheets (stored with file extension .XLM in Windows.) XLM was the default macro language for Excel through Excel 4.0.[25] Beginning with version 5.0 Excel recorded macros in VBA by default but with version 5.0 XLM recording was still allowed as an option. After version 5.0 that option was discontinued. All versions of Excel, including Excel 2021 are capable of running an XLM macro, though Microsoft discourages their use.[26]

Charts

Graph made using Microsoft Excel

Excel supports charts, graphs, or histograms generated from specified groups of cells. It also supports Pivot Charts that allow for a chart to be linked directly to a Pivot table. This allows the chart to be refreshed with the Pivot Table. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet or added as a separate object.

These displays are dynamically updated if the content of cells changes. For example, suppose that the important design requirements are displayed visually; then, in response to a user’s change in trial values for parameters, the curves describing the design change shape, and their points of intersection shift, assisting the selection of the best design.

Add-ins

Additional features are available using add-ins. Several are provided with Excel, including:

  • Analysis ToolPak: Provides data analysis tools for statistical and engineering analysis (includes analysis of variance and regression analysis)
  • Analysis ToolPak VBA: VBA functions for Analysis ToolPak
  • Euro Currency Tools: Conversion and formatting for euro currency
  • Solver Add-In: Tools for optimization and equation solving

Data storage and communication

Number of rows and columns

Versions of Excel up to 7.0 had a limitation in the size of their data sets of 16K (214 = 16384) rows. Versions 8.0 through 11.0 could handle 64K (216 = 65536) rows and 256 columns (28 as label ‘IV’). Version 12.0 onwards, including the current Version 16.x, can handle over 1M (220 = 1048576) rows, and 16384 (214, labeled as column ‘XFD’) columns.[27]

File formats

Excel Spreadsheet

Filename extension

.xls, (.xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb — Excel 2007)

Internet media type

application/vnd.ms-excel

Uniform Type Identifier (UTI) com.microsoft.excel.xls
Developed by Microsoft
Type of format Spreadsheet

Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Excel Binary File Format (.XLS) as its primary format.[28] Excel 2007 uses Office Open XML as its primary file format, an XML-based format that followed after a previous XML-based format called «XML Spreadsheet» («XMLSS»), first introduced in Excel 2002.[29]

Although supporting and encouraging the use of new XML-based formats as replacements, Excel 2007 remained backwards-compatible with the traditional, binary formats. In addition, most versions of Microsoft Excel can read CSV, DBF, SYLK, DIF, and other legacy formats. Support for some older file formats was removed in Excel 2007.[30] The file formats were mainly from DOS-based programs.

Binary

OpenOffice.org has created documentation of the Excel format. Two epochs of the format exist: the 97-2003 OLE format, and the older stream format.[31] Microsoft has made the Excel binary format specification available to freely download.[32]

XML Spreadsheet

The XML Spreadsheet format introduced in Excel 2002[29] is a simple, XML based format missing some more advanced features like storage of VBA macros. Though the intended file extension for this format is .xml, the program also correctly handles XML files with .xls extension. This feature is widely used by third-party applications (e.g. MySQL Query Browser) to offer «export to Excel» capabilities without implementing binary file format. The following example will be correctly opened by Excel if saved either as Book1.xml or Book1.xls:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Workbook xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
 xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
 xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
 xmlns:ss="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet"
 xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
 <Worksheet ss:Name="Sheet1">
  <Table ss:ExpandedColumnCount="2" ss:ExpandedRowCount="2" x:FullColumns="1" x:FullRows="1">
   <Row>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Name</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Example</Data></Cell>
   </Row>
   <Row>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="String">Value</Data></Cell>
    <Cell><Data ss:Type="Number">123</Data></Cell>
   </Row>
  </Table>
 </Worksheet>
</Workbook>

Current file extensions

Microsoft Excel 2007, along with the other products in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, introduced new file formats. The first of these (.xlsx) is defined in the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.

Excel 2007 formats

Format Extension Description
Excel Workbook .xlsx The default Excel 2007 and later workbook format. In reality, a ZIP compressed archive with a directory structure of XML text documents. Functions as the primary replacement for the former binary .xls format, although it does not support Excel macros for security reasons. Saving as .xlsx offers file size reduction over .xls[33]
Excel Macro-enabled Workbook .xlsm As Excel Workbook, but with macro support.
Excel Binary Workbook .xlsb As Excel Macro-enabled Workbook, but storing information in binary form rather than XML documents for opening and saving documents more quickly and efficiently. Intended especially for very large documents with tens of thousands of rows, and/or several hundreds of columns. This format is very useful for shrinking large Excel files as is often the case when doing data analysis.
Excel Macro-enabled Template .xltm A template document that forms a basis for actual workbooks, with macro support. The replacement for the old .xlt format.
Excel Add-in .xlam Excel add-in to add extra functionality and tools. Inherent macro support because of the file purpose.

Old file extensions

Format Extension Description
Spreadsheet .xls Main spreadsheet format which holds data in worksheets, charts, and macros
Add-in (VBA) .xla Adds custom functionality; written in VBA
Toolbar .xlb The file extension where Microsoft Excel custom toolbar settings are stored.
Chart .xlc A chart created with data from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that only saves the chart. To save the chart and spreadsheet save as .XLS. XLC is not supported in Excel 2007 or in any newer versions of Excel.
Dialog .xld Used in older versions of Excel.
Archive .xlk A backup of an Excel Spreadsheet
Add-in (DLL) .xll Adds custom functionality; written in C++/C, Fortran, etc. and compiled in to a special dynamic-link library
Macro .xlm A macro is created by the user or pre-installed with Excel.
Template .xlt A pre-formatted spreadsheet created by the user or by Microsoft Excel.
Module .xlv A module is written in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) for Microsoft Excel
Library .DLL Code written in VBA may access functions in a DLL, typically this is used to access the Windows API
Workspace .xlw Arrangement of the windows of multiple Workbooks

Using other Windows applications

Windows applications such as Microsoft Access and Microsoft Word, as well as Excel can communicate with each other and use each other’s capabilities. The most common are Dynamic Data Exchange: although strongly deprecated by Microsoft, this is a common method to send data between applications running on Windows, with official MS publications referring to it as «the protocol from hell».[34] As the name suggests, it allows applications to supply data to others for calculation and display. It is very common in financial markets, being used to connect to important financial data services such as Bloomberg and Reuters.

OLE Object Linking and Embedding allows a Windows application to control another to enable it to format or calculate data. This may take on the form of «embedding» where an application uses another to handle a task that it is more suited to, for example a PowerPoint presentation may be embedded in an Excel spreadsheet or vice versa.[35][36][37][38]

Using external data

Excel users can access external data sources via Microsoft Office features such as (for example) .odc connections built with the Office Data Connection file format. Excel files themselves may be updated using a Microsoft supplied ODBC driver.

Excel can accept data in real-time through several programming interfaces, which allow it to communicate with many data sources such as Bloomberg and Reuters (through addins such as Power Plus Pro).

  • DDE: «Dynamic Data Exchange» uses the message passing mechanism in Windows to allow data to flow between Excel and other applications. Although it is easy for users to create such links, programming such links reliably is so difficult that Microsoft, the creators of the system, officially refer to it as «the protocol from hell».[34] In spite of its many issues DDE remains the most common way for data to reach traders in financial markets.
  • Network DDE Extended the protocol to allow spreadsheets on different computers to exchange data. Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft no longer supports the facility.[39]
  • Real Time Data: RTD although in many ways technically superior to DDE, has been slow to gain acceptance, since it requires non-trivial programming skills, and when first released was neither adequately documented nor supported by the major data vendors.[40][41]

Alternatively, Microsoft Query provides ODBC-based browsing within Microsoft Excel.[42][43][44]

Export and migration of spreadsheets

Programmers have produced APIs to open Excel spreadsheets in a variety of applications and environments other than Microsoft Excel. These include opening Excel documents on the web using either ActiveX controls, or plugins like the Adobe Flash Player. The Apache POI opensource project provides Java libraries for reading and writing Excel spreadsheet files.

Password protection

Microsoft Excel protection offers several types of passwords:

  • Password to open a document[45]
  • Password to modify a document[46]
  • Password to unprotect the worksheet
  • Password to protect workbook
  • Password to protect the sharing workbook[47]

All passwords except password to open a document can be removed instantly regardless of the Microsoft Excel version used to create the document. These types of passwords are used primarily for shared work on a document. Such password-protected documents are not encrypted, and a data sources from a set password is saved in a document’s header. Password to protect workbook is an exception – when it is set, a document is encrypted with the standard password «VelvetSweatshop», but since it is known to the public, it actually does not add any extra protection to the document. The only type of password that can prevent a trespasser from gaining access to a document is password to open a document. The cryptographic strength of this kind of protection depends strongly on the Microsoft Excel version that was used to create the document.

In Microsoft Excel 95 and earlier versions, the password to open is converted to a 16-bit key that can be instantly cracked. In Excel 97/2000 the password is converted to a 40-bit key, which can also be cracked very quickly using modern equipment. As regards services that use rainbow tables (e.g. Password-Find), it takes up to several seconds to remove protection. In addition, password-cracking programs can brute-force attack passwords at a rate of hundreds of thousands of passwords a second, which not only lets them decrypt a document but also find the original password.

In Excel 2003/XP the encryption is slightly better – a user can choose any encryption algorithm that is available in the system (see Cryptographic Service Provider). Due to the CSP, an Excel file cannot be decrypted, and thus the password to open cannot be removed, though the brute-force attack speed remains quite high. Nevertheless, the older Excel 97/2000 algorithm is set by the default. Therefore, users who do not change the default settings lack reliable protection of their documents.

The situation changed fundamentally in Excel 2007, where the modern AES algorithm with a key of 128 bits started being used for decryption, and a 50,000-fold use of the hash function SHA1 reduced the speed of brute-force attacks down to hundreds of passwords per second. In Excel 2010, the strength of the protection by the default was increased two times due to the use of a 100,000-fold SHA1 to convert a password to a key.

Other platforms

Excel for mobile

Excel Mobile is a spreadsheet program that can edit XLSX files. It can edit and format text in cells, calculate formulas, search within the spreadsheet, sort rows and columns, freeze panes, filter the columns, add comments, and create charts. It cannot add columns or rows except at the edge of the document, rearrange columns or rows, delete rows or columns, or add spreadsheet tabs.[48][49][50][51][52][53] The 2007 version has the ability to use a full-screen mode to deal with limited screen resolution, as well as split panes to view different parts of a worksheet at one time.[51] Protection settings, zoom settings, autofilter settings, certain chart formatting, hidden sheets, and other features are not supported on Excel Mobile, and will be modified upon opening and saving a workbook.[52] In 2015, Excel Mobile became available for Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile on Windows Store.[54][55]

Excel for the web

Excel for the web is a free lightweight version of Microsoft Excel available as part of Office on the web, which also includes web versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Excel for the web can display most of the features available in the desktop versions of Excel, although it may not be able to insert or edit them. Certain data connections are not accessible on Excel for the web, including with charts that may use these external connections. Excel for the web also cannot display legacy features, such as Excel 4.0 macros or Excel 5.0 dialog sheets. There are also small differences between how some of the Excel functions work.[56]

Microsoft Excel Viewer

Microsoft Excel Viewer was a freeware program for Microsoft Windows for viewing and printing spreadsheet documents created by Excel.[57] Microsoft retired the viewer in April 2018 with the last security update released in February 2019 for Excel Viewer 2007 (SP3).[58][59]

The first version released by Microsoft was Excel 97 Viewer.[60][61] Excel 97 Viewer was supported in Windows CE for Handheld PCs.[62] In October 2004, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2003.[63] In September 2007, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3).[64] In January 2008, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 (featuring a non-collapsible Ribbon interface).[65] In April 2009, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2).[66] In October 2011, Microsoft released Excel Viewer 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3).[67]

Microsoft advises to view and print Excel files for free to use the Excel Mobile application for Windows 10 and for Windows 7 and Windows 8 to upload the file to OneDrive and use Excel for the web with a Microsoft account to open them in a browser.[58][68]

Quirks

In addition to issues with spreadsheets in general, other problems specific to Excel include numeric precision, misleading statistics functions, mod function errors, date limitations and more.

Numeric precision

Excel maintains 15 figures in its numbers, but they are not always accurate: the bottom line should be the same as the top line.

Despite the use of 15-figure precision, Excel can display many more figures (up to thirty) upon user request. But the displayed figures are not those actually used in its computations, and so, for example, the difference of two numbers may differ from the difference of their displayed values. Although such departures are usually beyond the 15th decimal, exceptions do occur, especially for very large or very small numbers. Serious errors can occur if decisions are made based upon automated comparisons of numbers (for example, using the Excel If function), as equality of two numbers can be unpredictable.[citation needed]

In the figure, the fraction 1/9000 is displayed in Excel. Although this number has a decimal representation that is an infinite string of ones, Excel displays only the leading 15 figures. In the second line, the number one is added to the fraction, and again Excel displays only 15 figures. In the third line, one is subtracted from the sum using Excel. Because the sum in the second line has only eleven 1’s after the decimal, the difference when 1 is subtracted from this displayed value is three 0’s followed by a string of eleven 1’s. However, the difference reported by Excel in the third line is three 0’s followed by a string of thirteen 1’s and two extra erroneous digits. This is because Excel calculates with about half a digit more than it displays.

Excel works with a modified 1985 version of the IEEE 754 specification.[69] Excel’s implementation involves conversions between binary and decimal representations, leading to accuracy that is on average better than one would expect from simple fifteen digit precision, but that can be worse. See the main article for details.

Besides accuracy in user computations, the question of accuracy in Excel-provided functions may be raised. Particularly in the arena of statistical functions, Excel has been criticized for sacrificing accuracy for speed of calculation.[70][71]

As many calculations in Excel are executed using VBA, an additional issue is the accuracy of VBA, which varies with variable type and user-requested precision.[72]

Statistical functions

The accuracy and convenience of statistical tools in Excel has been criticized,[73][74][75][76][77] as mishandling missing data, as returning incorrect values due to inept handling of round-off and large numbers, as only selectively updating calculations on a spreadsheet when some cell values are changed, and as having a limited set of statistical tools. Microsoft has announced some of these issues are addressed in Excel 2010.[78]

Excel MOD function error

Excel has issues with modulo operations. In the case of excessively large results, Excel will return the error warning #NUM! instead of an answer.[79]

Fictional leap day in the year 1900

Excel includes February 29, 1900, incorrectly treating 1900 as a leap year, even though e.g. 2100 is correctly treated as a non-leap year.[80][81] The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3 (deliberately implemented to save computer memory), and was also purposely implemented in Excel, for the purpose of bug compatibility.[82] This legacy has later been carried over into Office Open XML file format.[83]

Thus a (not necessarily whole) number greater than or equal to 61 interpreted as a date and time are the (real) number of days after December 30, 1899, 0:00, a non-negative number less than 60 is the number of days after December 31, 1899, 0:00, and numbers with whole part 60 represent the fictional day.

Date range

Excel supports dates with years in the range 1900–9999, except that December 31, 1899, can be entered as 0 and is displayed as 0-jan-1900.

Converting a fraction of a day into hours, minutes and days by treating it as a moment on the day January 1, 1900, does not work for a negative fraction.[84]

Conversion problems

Entering text that happens to be in a form that is interpreted as a date, the text can be unintentionally changed to a standard date format. A similar problem occurs when a text happens to be in the form of a floating-point notation of a number. In these cases the original exact text cannot be recovered from the result. Formatting the cell as TEXT before entering ambiguous text prevents Excel from converting to a date.

This issue has caused a well known problem in the analysis of DNA, for example in bioinformatics. As first reported in 2004,[85] genetic scientists found that Excel automatically and incorrectly converts certain gene names into dates. A follow-up study in 2016 found many peer reviewed scientific journal papers had been affected and that «Of the selected journals, the proportion of published articles with Excel files containing gene lists that are affected by gene name errors is 19.6 %.»[86] Excel parses the copied and pasted data and sometimes changes them depending on what it thinks they are. For example, MARCH1 (Membrane Associated Ring-CH-type finger 1) gets converted to the date March 1 (1-Mar) and SEPT2 (Septin 2) is converted into September 2 (2-Sep) etc.[87] While some secondary news sources[88] reported this as a fault with Excel, the original authors of the 2016 paper placed the blame with the researchers misusing Excel.[86][89]

In August 2020 the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) published new guidelines in the journal Nature regarding gene naming in order to avoid issues with «symbols that affect data handling and retrieval.» So far 27 genes have been renamed, including changing MARCH1 to MARCHF1 and SEPT1 to SEPTIN1 in order to avoid accidental conversion of the gene names into dates.[90]

Errors with large strings

The following functions return incorrect results when passed a string longer than 255 characters:[91]

  • type() incorrectly returns 16, meaning «Error value»
  • IsText(), when called as a method of the VBA object WorksheetFunction (i.e., WorksheetFunction.IsText() in VBA), incorrectly returns «false».

Filenames

Microsoft Excel will not open two documents with the same name and instead will display the following error:

A document with the name ‘%s’ is already open. You cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folders. To open the second document, either close the document that is currently open, or rename one of the documents.[92]

The reason is for calculation ambiguity with linked cells. If there is a cell ='[Book1.xlsx]Sheet1'!$G$33, and there are two books named «Book1» open, there is no way to tell which one the user means.[93]

Versions

Early history

Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982. Multiplan became very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) on November 19, 1987.[94][95] Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by the early 1990s, Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve its position as a leading PC software developer. This accomplishment solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing GUI software. Microsoft maintained its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so.

Microsoft Windows

Excel 2.0 is the first version of Excel for the Intel platform. Versions prior to 2.0 were only available on the Apple Macintosh.

Excel 2.0 (1987)

The first Windows version was labeled «2» to correspond to the Mac version. It was announced on October 6, 1987, and released on November 19.[96] This included a run-time version of Windows.[97]

BYTE in 1989 listed Excel for Windows as among the «Distinction» winners of the BYTE Awards. The magazine stated that the port of the «extraordinary» Macintosh version «shines», with a user interface as good as or better than the original.

Excel 3.0 (1990)

Included toolbars, drawing capabilities, outlining, add-in support, 3D charts, and many more new features.[97]

Excel 4.0 (1992)

Introduced auto-fill.[98]

Also, an easter egg in Excel 4.0 reveals a hidden animation of a dancing set of numbers 1 through 3, representing Lotus 1-2-3, which is then crushed by an Excel logo.[99]

Excel 5.0 (1993)

With version 5.0, 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 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 techniques.

The automation functionality provided by VBA made Excel a target for macro viruses. This caused serious problems 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, including a «Hall of Tortured Souls», a Doom-like minigame, although since version 10 Microsoft has taken measures to eliminate such undocumented features from their products.[100]

5.0 was released in a 16-bit x86 version for Windows 3.1 and later in a 32-bit version for NT 3.51 (x86/Alpha/PowerPC)

Excel 95 (v7.0)

Released in 1995 with Microsoft Office for Windows 95, this is the first major version after Excel 5.0, as there is no Excel 6.0 with all of the Office applications standardizing on the same major version number.

Internal rewrite to 32-bits. Almost no external changes, but faster and more stable.

Excel 95 contained a hidden Doom-like mini-game called «The Hall of Tortured Souls», a series of rooms featuring the names and faces of the developers as an easter egg.[101]

Excel 97 (v8.0)

Included in Office 97 (for x86 and Alpha). This was a major upgrade that introduced the paper clip office assistant and featured standard VBA used instead of internal Excel Basic. It introduced the now-removed Natural Language labels.

This version of Excel includes a flight simulator as an Easter Egg.

Excel 2000 (v9.0)

Included in Office 2000. This was a minor upgrade but introduced an upgrade to the clipboard where it can hold multiple objects at once. The Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearance in Excel 97 had annoyed many users, became less intrusive.

A small 3-D game called «Dev Hunter» (inspired by Spy Hunter) was included as an easter egg.[102][103]

Excel 2002 (v10.0)

Included in Office XP. Very minor enhancements.

Excel 2003 (v11.0)

Included in Office 2003. Minor enhancements.

Excel 2007 (v12.0)

Included in Office 2007. This release was a major upgrade from the previous version. Similar to other updated Office products, Excel in 2007 used the new Ribbon menu system. This was different from what users were used to, and was met with mixed reactions. One study reported fairly good acceptance by users except highly experienced users and users of word processing applications with a classical WIMP interface, but was less convinced in terms of efficiency and organization.[104] However, an online survey reported that a majority of respondents had a negative opinion of the change, with advanced users being «somewhat more negative» than intermediate users, and users reporting a self-estimated reduction in productivity.

Added functionality included Tables,[105] and the SmartArt set of editable business diagrams. Also added was an improved management of named variables through the Name Manager, and much-improved flexibility in formatting graphs, which allow (x, y) coordinate labeling and lines of arbitrary weight. Several improvements to pivot tables were introduced.

Also like other office products, the Office Open XML file formats were introduced, including .xlsm for a workbook with macros and .xlsx for a workbook without macros.[106]

Specifically, many of the size limitations of previous versions were greatly increased. To illustrate, the number of rows was now 1,048,576 (220) and columns was 16,384 (214; the far-right column is XFD). This changes what is a valid A1 reference versus a named range. This version made more extensive use of multiple cores for the calculation of spreadsheets; however, VBA macros are not handled in parallel and XLL add‑ins were only executed in parallel if they were thread-safe and this was indicated at registration.

Excel 2010 (v14.0)

Microsoft Excel 2010 running on Windows 7

Included in Office 2010, this is the next major version after v12.0, as version number 13 was skipped.

Minor enhancements and 64-bit support,[107] including the following:

  • Multi-threading recalculation (MTR) for commonly used functions
  • Improved pivot tables
  • More conditional formatting options
  • Additional image editing capabilities
  • In-cell charts called sparklines
  • Ability to preview before pasting
  • Office 2010 backstage feature for document-related tasks
  • Ability to customize the Ribbon
  • Many new formulas, most highly specialized to improve accuracy[108]

Excel 2013 (v15.0)

Included in Office 2013, along with a lot of new tools included in this release:

  • Improved Multi-threading and Memory Contention
  • FlashFill[109]
  • Power View[110]
  • Power Pivot[111]
  • Timeline Slicer
  • Windows App
  • Inquire[112]
  • 50 new functions[113]

Excel 2016 (v16.0)

Included in Office 2016, along with a lot of new tools included in this release:

  • Power Query integration
  • Read-only mode for Excel
  • Keyboard access for Pivot Tables and Slicers in Excel
  • New Chart Types
  • Quick data linking in Visio
  • Excel forecasting functions
  • Support for multiselection of Slicer items using touch
  • Time grouping and Pivot Chart Drill Down
  • Excel data cards[114]

Excel 2019, Excel 2021, Office 365 and subsequent (v16.0)

Microsoft no longer releases Office or Excel in discrete versions. Instead, features are introduced automatically over time using Windows Update. The version number remains 16.0. Thereafter only the approximate dates when features appear can now be given.

  • Dynamic Arrays. These are essentially Array Formulas but they «Spill» automatically into neighboring cells and does not need the ctrl-shift-enter to create them. Further, dynamic arrays are the default format, with new «@» and «#» operators to provide compatibility with previous versions. This is perhaps the biggest structural change since 2007, and is in response to a similar feature in Google Sheets. Dynamic arrays started appearing in pre-releases about 2018, and as of March 2020 are available in published versions of Office 365 provided a user selected «Office Insiders».

Apple Macintosh

Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011

  • 1985 Excel 1.0
  • 1988 Excel 1.5
  • 1989 Excel 2.2
  • 1990 Excel 3.0
  • 1992 Excel 4.0
  • 1993 Excel 5.0 (part of Office 4.x—Final Motorola 680×0 version[115] and first PowerPC version)
  • 1998 Excel 8.0 (part of Office 98)
  • 2000 Excel 9.0 (part of Office 2001)
  • 2001 Excel 10.0 (part of Office v. X)
  • 2004 Excel 11.0 (part of Office 2004)
  • 2008 Excel 12.0 (part of Office 2008)
  • 2010 Excel 14.0 (part of Office 2011)
  • 2015 Excel 15.0 (part of Office 2016—Office 2016 for Mac brings the Mac version much closer to parity with its Windows cousin, harmonizing many of the reporting and high-level developer functions, while bringing the ribbon and styling into line with its PC counterpart.)[116]

OS/2

  • 1989 Excel 2.2
  • 1990 Excel 2.3
  • 1991 Excel 3.0

Summary

Legend: Old version, not maintained Older version, still maintained Current stable version
Microsoft Excel for Windows release history

Year Name Version Comments
1987 Excel 2 2.0 Renumbered to 2 to correspond with contemporary Macintosh version. Supported macros (later known as Excel 4 macros).
1990 Excel 3 3.0 Added 3D graphing capabilities
1992 Excel 4 4.0 Introduced auto-fill feature
1993 Excel 5 5.0 Included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and various object-oriented options
1995 Excel 95 7.0 Renumbered for contemporary Word version. Both programs were packaged in Microsoft Office by this time.
1997 Excel 97 8.0
2000 Excel 2000 9.0 Part of Microsoft Office 2000, which was itself part of Windows Millennium (also known as «Windows ME»).
2002 Excel 2002 10.0
2003 Excel 2003 11.0 Released only 1 year later to correspond better with the rest of Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, etc.).
2007 Excel 2007 12.0
2010 Excel 2010 14.0 Due to superstitions surrounding the number 13, Excel 13 was skipped in version counting.
2013 Excel 2013 15.0 Introduced 50 more mathematical functions (available as pre-packaged commands, rather than typing the formula manually).
2016 Excel 2016 16.0 Part of Microsoft Office 2016
Microsoft Excel for Macintosh release history

Year Name Version Comments
1985 Excel 1 1.0 Initial version of Excel. Supported macros (later known as Excel 4 macros).
1988 Excel 1.5 1.5
1989 Excel 2 2.2
1990 Excel 3 3.0
1992 Excel 4 4.0
1993 Excel 5 5.0 Only available on PowerPC-based Macs. First PowerPC version.
1998 Excel 98 8.0 Excel 6 and Excel 7 were skipped to correspond with the rest of Microsoft Office at the time.
2000 Excel 2000 9.0
2001 Excel 2001 10.0
2004 Excel 2004 11.0
2008 Excel 2008 12.0
2011 Excel 2011 14.0 As with the Windows version, version 13 was skipped for superstitious reasons.
2016 Excel 2016 16.0 As with the rest of Microsoft Office, so it is for Excel: Future release dates for the Macintosh version are intended to correspond better to those for the Windows version, from 2016 onward.
Microsoft Excel for OS/2 release history

Year Name Version Comments
1989 Excel 2.2 2.2 Numbered in between Windows versions at the time
1990 Excel 2.3 2.3
1991 Excel 3 3.0 Last OS/2 version. Discontinued subseries of Microsoft Excel, which is otherwise still an actively developed program.

Impact

Excel offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets; however, the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet software, VisiCalc: the program displays cells organized in rows and columns, and each cell may contain data or a formula, with relative or absolute references to other cells.

Excel 2.0 for Windows, which was modeled after its Mac GUI-based counterpart, indirectly expanded the installed base of the then-nascent Windows environment. Excel 2.0 was released a month before Windows 2.0, and the installed base of Windows was so low at that point in 1987 that Microsoft had to bundle a runtime version of Windows 1.0 with Excel 2.0.[117] Unlike Microsoft Word, there never was a DOS version of Excel.

Excel became the first spreadsheet to allow the user to define the appearance of spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes, and cell appearance). It also introduced intelligent cell re-computation, 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 introduced auto-fill, the ability to drag and expand the selection box to automatically copy a cell or row contents to adjacent cells or rows, adjusting the copies intelligently by automatically incrementing cell references or contents. Excel also introduced extensive graphing capabilities.

Security

Because Excel is widely used, it has been attacked by hackers. While Excel is not directly exposed to the Internet, if an attacker can get a victim to open a file in Excel, and there is an appropriate security bug in Excel, then the attacker can gain control of the victim’s computer.[118] UK’s GCHQ has a tool named TORNADO ALLEY with this purpose.[119][120]

Games

Besides the easter eggs, numerous games have been created or recreated in Excel, such as Tetris, 2048, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Angry Birds, Pac-Man, Civilization, Monopoly, Battleship, Blackjack, Space Invaders, and others.[121][122][123][124][125]

In 2020, Excel became an esport with the advent of the Financial Modeling World Cup.[126]

See also

  • Comparison of spreadsheet software
  • Numbers (spreadsheet)—the iWork equivalent
  • Spreadmart
  • Financial Modeling World Cup, online esport financial modelling competition using Excel

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External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Excel

  • Microsoft Excel – official site

What’s the difference between Excel 2013 and Excel 2010?

Jump to:

  • Excel 2013 vs Excel 2010
  • Other resources
  • Excel 2010 vs Excel 2007
  • Excel 2007 vs Excel 2003
  • Excel 2003 vs Excel 2002/XP
  • Excel 2002/XP vs Excel 2000
  • Excel 2000 vs Excel 97
  • Sources

What’s the difference between Excel
2013 and Excel 2010?

Excel 2013 logo

Excel 2013 — continuing Microsoft’s commitment to collaborative working and increasing the user’s ability to visualise, analyse and present their results quickly and efficiently.

1. Making it easier for the user to analyse data

  • FlashFill
    Excel 2013 notices pattern in the user’s data entry and then auto completes the remaining data — so no need to use formulas or macros to do this.
  • Recommended Pivot table
    Excel gives the user a range of previews of pivot table options, allowing the user to select the best option.

Excel 2013 Recommended charts

2. New analysis tools to improve the visualisation of data

Includes the following:

  • Recommended charts
    Excel 2013 recommends charts using the Quick preview feature. The user can then select the most appropriate chart.
  • Quick analysis lens
    This is a new single click method, for applying formatting, sparklines, or charts to make analysis more effective.
  • Chart formatting control
    2013 includes a more interactive interface for customising charts.

3. Making it easier to share work, present it online, add it to a social networks

  • Simplified sharing
    2013 includes a default setting so that workbooks are automatically saved online. This ensures all users are working on the latest version, with the added protection of control of the viewing and editing permissions.
  • Share part of a worksheet via embedding selected sections in social networks.
  • Present online — 2013 makes it easier to share workbooks with colleagues using a Lync conversation or meeting.

Other MS Excel 2013 resources

  • MS Excel 2013 user support and help forum
    From the UK’s #1 provider of MS Office training. 40,508 posts and counting!
  • MS Excel 2013 hints and tips
    From qualified Microsoft trainers

What’s the difference between Excel
2010 and Excel 2007?

At a glance, it doesn’t look as though there’s a great deal of difference between Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. A couple of additions to the Ribbon, the new Backstage view and a handful of bonus features such as the Slicer and Sparklines. It could be said that an «average» user could switch from 2007 to 2010 without batting an eyelid.

Anyone that handles large amounts of data, however, will appreciate the additions made to Excel, many of which are designed to bring the power of data analysis to those unwilling to dedicate hours trying to work out how to use what appear to be impenetrable tools.

Upgrading to
the latest Excel?

Have you considered a short Excel training course to help you get the most out of the new version?

There are many different styles of training available, such as a public schedule course, onsite at your home or office, one-to-one training, closed company group training, eLearning (online) and many more styles.

All of these options can be bespoke/tailored to suit your needs, except for public schedule which follows a set syllabus (see example: Excel Intermediate).
If you’re interested in an MS Excel 2010 training course, you may like to visit this page.

Access the Right Tools, at the Right Time

New and improved features can help you be more productive, but only if you can find them when you need them. Like the other Microsoft Office 2010 programs, Excel 2010 includes the Microsoft Office Fluent interface, which consists of a customizable visual system of tools and commands.

Improved Ribbon

First introduced in Excel 2007, the Ribbon makes it easy for you to find commands and features that were previously buried in complex menus and toolbars. Although you could customize the Quick Access Toolbar in Excel 2007, it wasn’t possible to add your own tabs or groups to the ribbon. In Excel 2010, however, you can create custom tabs and groups and rename or change the order of the built-in tabs and groups.

Microsoft Office Backstage view

Click the File tab to open Backstage view, where you create new files, open existing files, save, send, protect, preview, and print files, set options for Excel, and more.

Sparklines

Sparklines are a new kind of visualization in Excel 2010. They are small cell-sized graphics used to show trends in series of values by using line, column, or win/loss charts. Sparklines allow the viewer to see in a single cell information-dense graphics that greatly increase reader comprehension of the data. They demonstrate the “what” not the “why” of the data.

Slicers

Slicers make filtering and interpretation of data easier. They improve PivotTables and CUBE functions in a workbook. Slices filtered data interactively. They float above the grid and behave like report filters so you can hook them to PivotTables, PivotCharts, or CUBE functions to create interactive reports or dashboards.

Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel add-in

If you have to model and analyse very large amounts of data, you can download the PowerPivot for Excel add-in and work with that data inside your Excel workbooks. By using this add-in, you can quickly combine data from multiple sources that include corporate databases, worksheets, reports, and data feeds. You can then interactively explore, calculate, and summarize that data by using PivotTables, slicers, and other Excel features. As you interact with the data, you will notice that the response time is fast, whether you are working with hundreds of rows, or hundreds of millions of rows. If you have access to Excel Services in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you can make your reports and analyses available on a SharePoint site so that other people in your organization can benefit from your work.

Workbook Management Tools

Excel 2010 comes with tools that can help you manage, protect, and share your content.

  • Recover previous versions —
    You can now recover versions of files that you closed without saving. This is helpful when you forget to manually save, when you save changes that you didn’t mean to save, or when you just want to revert to an earlier version of your workbook.
  • Protected view —
    Excel 2010 includes a Protected View, so you can make more informed decisions before exposing your computer to possible vulnerabilities. By default, documents that originate from an Internet source are opened in Protected View. When this happens, you see a warning on the Message bar, along with the option to enable editing. You can control which originating sources trigger Protected View. You can also set specific file types to open in Protected View regardless of where they originate
  • Trusted documents
    The trusted documents feature is designed to make it easier to open workbooks and other documents that contain active content, such as data connections or macros. Now, after you confirm that active content in a workbook is safe to enable, you don’t have to repeat yourself. Excel 2010 remembers the workbooks you trust so that you can avoid being prompted each time you open the workbook.

Access you Excel workbooks in new ways

You can now access and work with your files from anywhere you are — whether at work, at home, or on the go.

Microsoft Excel Web App

Excel Web App extends your Excel experience to the web browser, where you can work with workbooks directly on the site where the workbook is stored. Excel Web App is part of Microsoft Office Web Apps, and is available in Windows Live SkyDrive and in organizations that have configured Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010.

With Excel Web App, you can:

  • View a workbook in the browser When you click on a workbook to open it in Excel Web App, the workbook is displayed in view mode. You can sort and filter data in the workbook, expand PivotTables to see relationships and trends in the data, recalculate values, and view different worksheets.
  • Edit a workbook in the browser With Excel Web App, all you need to access your workbooks is a browser. Your teammates can work with you, regardless of which version of Excel they have. When you click on an Excel workbook that is stored in a SharePoint site or in SkyDrive, the workbook opens directly in your browser. Your workbooks look the same in the browser as they do in Excel. You can edit your worksheets in the browser, using the familiar look and feel of Excel. When you edit in the browser, you can change data, enter or edit formulas, and apply basic formatting within the spreadsheet. You can also work with others on the same workbook at the same time.

Excel Mobile 2010 for Windows Phone 7

If you have Windows Phone 7, you can use Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 to work with your files from anywhere—whether you’re at work, at home, or on the go. Excel Mobile 2010 is part of Office Mobile and already on your phone in the Office Hub, so you don’t need to download or install anything else to get started.

You can use Excel Mobile to view and edit workbooks stored on your phone, sent to you as email attachments, or hosted on a SharePoint 2010 site through SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010. When you edit a workbook via SharePoint Workspace Mobile, you can save your changes back to the SharePoint site when you’re online.

You can create, update, and instantly recalculate your spreadsheets using many of the same tools you already know and use in the desktop version of Excel:

  • Use the outline view to switch between worksheets or charts in a workbook
  • Sort, filter, and manage your spreadsheets
  • Add or edit text and numbers
  • Add comments

Improved PivotTables

PivotTables are now easier to use and more responsive. Key improvements include:

  • Performance enhancements — In Excel 2010, multi-threading helps speed up data retrieval, sorting, and filtering in PivotTables.
  • PivotTable labels — It’s now possible to fill down labels in a PivotTable. You can also repeat labels in PivotTables to display item captions of nested fields in all rows and columns.
  • Enhanced filtering — You can use slicers to quickly filter data in a PivotTable with the click of a button and see which filters are applied without having to open additional menus. In addition, the filter interface includes a handy search box that can help you to find what you need among potentially thousands (or even millions) of items in your PivotTables.
  • Write-back support — In Excel 2010, you can change values in the OLAP PivotTable Values area and have them written back to the Analysis Services cube on the OLAP server. You can use the write-back feature in what-if mode and then roll back the changes when you no longer need them, or you can save the changes. You can use the write-back feature with any OLAP provider that supports the UPDATE CUBE statement.
  • Show Values As feature — The Show Values As feature includes a number of new, automatic calculations, such as % of Parent Row Total, % of Parent Column Total, % of Parent Total, % Running Total, Rank Smallest to Largest, and Rank Largest to Smallest.
  • PivotChart improvements — It is now easier to interact with PivotChart reports. Specifically, it’s easier to filter data directly in a PivotChart and to reorganize the layout of a PivotChart by adding and removing fields. Similarly, with a single click, you can hide all field buttons on the PivotChart report.

Improved Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting makes it easy to highlight interesting cells or ranges of cells, emphasize unusual values, and visualize data by using data bars, colour scales, and icon sets. Excel 2010 includes even greater formatting flexibility:

  • New icon sets — First introduced in Office Excel 2007, icon sets let you display icons for different categories of data, based on whatever threshold you determine. For example, you can use a green up arrow to represent higher values, a yellow sideways arrow to represent middle values, and a red down arrow to represent lower values. In Excel 2010, you have access to more icon sets, including triangles, stars, and boxes. You can also mix and match icons from different sets and more easily hide icons from view—for example, you might choose to show icons only for high profit values and omit them for middle and lower values.
  • More options for data bars — Excel 2010 comes with new formatting options for data bars. You can apply solid fills or borders to the data bar, or set the bar direction from right-to-left instead of left-to-right. In addition, data bars for negative values appear on the opposite side of an axis from positive values, as shown here.
  • Other improvements — When specifying criteria for conditional or data validation rules, it’s now possible to refer to values in other worksheets in your workbook.

Obtain Powerful Analysis from your Desktop

Whether at work or home, you need to be able to manipulate and analyse your data in a way that gives you new insight or helps you make better decisions — and the faster you can finish your task the better. Excel 2010 provides new and improved analysis tools that enable you to do just that.

  • PowerPivot for Excel add-in — If you need to analyse large quantities of data, you can download the Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel add-in, which adds a PowerPivot tab to the Excel ribbon.
  • With PowerPivot for Excel, you can import millions of rows of data from multiple data sources into a single Excel workbook, create relationships between heterogeneous data, create calculated columns and measures using formulas, build PivotTables and PivotCharts, and then further analyse the data so that you can make timely business decisions— all without requiring IT assistance.
  • Improved Solver add-in
    Excel 2010 includes a new version of the Solver add-in, which you can use to find optimal solutions in what-if analysis. Solver has an improved user interface, a new Evolutionary Solver, based on genetic algorithms, that handles models with any Excel functions, new global optimization options, better linear programming and nonlinear optimization methods, and new Linearity and Feasibility reports. In addition, the Solver add-in is now available in a 64-bit version.

Improved Function Accuracy

In response to feedback from the academic, engineering, and scientific communities, Excel 2010 now includes a set of more accurate statistical and other functions. Certain existing functions have also been renamed to better describe what they do.

  • Accuracy improvements — A number of functions have been optimized to improve accuracy. For example, Excel 2010 returns more accurate results for the beta and chi-squared distributions.
  • More consistent functions — Certain statistical functions have been renamed so that they are more consistent with the function definitions of the scientific community and with other function names in Excel. The new function names also more accurately describe their functionality. Workbooks created in earlier versions of Excel will continue to work despite these name changes, because the original functions still exist in a Compatibility category.

Improved Filter Capabilities

In addition to slicers, which are described earlier in this article, Excel 2010 comes with new features that make it easier to sort and filter data.

  • New search filter —
    When you filter data in Excel tables, PivotTables, and PivotCharts, you can use a new search box, which helps you to find what you need in long lists. For example, to find a specific product in a catalogue that stocks over 100,000 items, start by typing your search term, and relevant items instantly appear in the list. You can narrow the results further by deselecting the items you don’t want to see.
  • Filter and sort regardless of location —
    In an Excel table, table headers replace regular worksheet headers at the top of columns when you scroll down in a long table. AutoFilter buttons now remain visible along with table headers in your table columns, so you can sort and filter data quickly without having to scroll all the way back up to the top of the table.

64-bit Excel

Excel 2010 is available in a 64-bit version, which means that power users and analysts can create bigger, more complex workbooks. By using a 64-bit version, you can address physical memory (RAM) that is above the 2-gigabyte (GB) limit that exists in the 32-bit version of Excel. You will need to have at least 5-10 gig of memory on your PC to significantly benefit from using the 64-bit version. Most PCs have at most 3 gig, which is far too small.

Performance improvements in Excel 2010 can help you to interact with your data more efficiently. Specific investments include:

  • General improvements — In response to customer feedback, Excel 2010 improves performance in a number of areas. For example, Excel 2010 is more responsive when you move and resize charts, work in Page Layout view, and interact with shapes on the worksheet.
  • Support for large data sets — Excel 2010 handles workbooks that contain massive amounts of data more efficiently. Specifically, it takes less time to perform activities commonly performed on large data sets, such as filtering and sorting the data, copy and pasting it from one worksheet to another, and using the Fill feature to copy formulas.
  • Multicore improvements — Multithreading improvements in Excel 2010 help to speed up the process of retrieving, sorting, and filtering data in PivotTables and Excel tables. In addition, opening and saving large files is generally faster than before.
  • Faster calculation — If workbooks are critical to key business processes in your organization, it’s important that calculation speed doesn’t become a bottleneck. To achieve faster calculation performance, Excel 2010 includes support for asynchronous user-defined functions, which can run simultaneously without using multiple Excel calculation threads. This is valuable when you are importing data into worksheets in custom ways, and in high-performance computing (HPC) scenarios.

Create Workbooks with More Visual Impact

No matter how much data you work with, it’s important to have tools at your disposal that let you explore and convey ideas with compelling visuals, such as charts, diagrams, pictures, or screenshots.

Improved Charting

It’s easier to work with charts in Excel 2010. Specific improvements include:

  • New charting limits — In Excel 2010, the limitation on the number of data points that can be created on a chart has been removed. The number of data points is limited only by available memory. This enables people—particularly those of you in the scientific community—to more effectively visualize and analyse large sets of data.
  • Quick access to formatting options — In Excel 2010, you can instantly access formatting options by double-clicking a chart element.
  • Macro recording for chart elements — In Office Excel 2007, recording a macro while formatting a chart or other object did not produce any macro code. In Excel 2010, however, you can use the macro recorder to record formatting changes to charts and other objects.

Support for Equations

You can use the new equation editing tools in Excel 2010 to insert common mathematical equations into your worksheets or to build up your own equations by using a library of math symbols. You can also insert new equations inside of text boxes and other shapes. To get started, on the Insert tab, in the Symbols group, click the arrow next to Equation.

More Themes

In Excel 2010, there are more themes and styles than ever before. These elements can help you apply professional designs consistently across your workbooks and other Microsoft Office documents. Once you select a theme, Excel 2010 does the design work. Text, charts, graphics, tables, and drawing objects all change to reflect the theme you have selected, so that all elements in your workbook visually complement one another.

Paste with Live Preview

The paste with live preview feature enables you to save time when reusing content within Excel 2010 or across other programs. You can use it to preview various paste options, such as Keep Source Column Widths, No Borders, or Keep Source Formatting. The live preview enables you to visually determine how your pasted content will look before you actually paste it in the worksheet. When you move your pointer over Paste Options to preview results, you’ll see a menu containing items that change contextually to best fit the content you are reusing. ScreenTips provide additional information to help you make the right decision.

Improved Picture-editing Tools

Communicating ideas in Excel 2010 isn’t always about showing numbers or charts. If you want to use photos, drawings, or SmartArt to communicate visually, you can take advantage of the following features:

  • Screenshots — Quickly take a screenshot and add it to your workbook, and then use the tools on the Picture Tools tab to edit and improve the screenshot.
  • New SmartArt graphic layouts — With new picture layouts, you can tell your story with photographs. For example, use the Captioned Picture layout to show pictures with nice-looking captions underneath.
  • Picture corrections — Fine tune the colour of a picture, or adjust its brightness, contrast, or sharpness—all without having to use additional photo-editing software.
  • New and improved artistic effects — Apply different artistic effects to your picture to make it look more like a sketch, drawing, or painting. New artistic effects include Pencil Sketch, Line Drawing, Watercolour Sponge, Mosaic Bubbles, Glass, Pastels Smooth, Plastic Wrap, Photocopy, Paint Strokes, and many more.
  • Better compression and cropping — You now have better control of the image quality and compression trade-offs, so that you can make the right choice for the medium (print, screen, e-mail) that your workbook will be used for.

Collaborate on Workbooks in New Ways

Excel 2010 offers improved ways to publish, edit, and share workbooks with other people in your organization.

  • Co-authoring workbooks
    With Excel Web App, which is part of Office Web Apps, it’s now possible for different people to edit a workbook at the same time from different locations. If you’re in a small company or working on your own from home or school, all you need is a free Windows Live account to simultaneously author workbooks with others. Corporate users in companies running Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technology can also use this functionality within their firewall.
  • Improved Excel Services — If your organization previously used Excel Services to share Excel workbooks on SharePoint Server sites, take note of the following improvements:
  • Improved user experience — Some of the more visible changes include the ability to refresh elements of a page, instead of having every change require a page refresh, and the addition of scroll bars, which let you easily scroll throughout the worksheet.
  • Better integration with SharePoint 2010 features — In this version of Excel Services, you get better integration with important SharePoint 2010 features, including security, content management, version control, data connection management, and service administration features. In addition, Excel Services better integrates with the built-in business intelligence capabilities in SharePoint.
  • Improved support for workbook features — Previously, if a workbook contained unsupported features, it couldn’t be opened at all in the browser. Now, if a workbook contains an Excel feature that isn’t supported, that workbook will, in most cases, open in the browser. In addition, more Excel features are supported in Excel Services, including new Excel 2010 features such as Sparklines and slicers.
  • More support for developing applications — Developers and non-developers alike can take advantage of new tools, such as a REST application programming interface, for building business applications.

Accessibility Checker

The new Accessibility Checker tool in Excel 2010 enables you to find and fix issues that can make it difficult for people with disabilities to read or interact with your workbook. You can open the Accessibility Checker by clicking the File tab, clicking Check for Issues located in the Info section, and then clicking Check Accessibility. Errors and warnings will appear in a task pane. You can then review the issues and see which ones you need to fix.

In addition to the Accessibility Checker, you can add alternative text to more objects in your worksheet, including Excel tables and PivotTables. This information is useful to people with visual impairments who may be unable to easily or fully see the object.

Improved Language Tools

In the Excel Options dialog box, multilingual users can quickly set preferences for editing, display, ScreenTip, and Help languages. And, changing your language settings in Excel automatically changes them across all applicable Microsoft Office 2010 applications. If you don’t have the software or keyboard layout installed that you need, you are notified, and links are provided to make it easier to quickly resolve such issues.

Extend Workbooks in New Ways —Improved Programmability Features

If you develop custom workbook solutions, you can take advantage of new ways to extend those solutions.

Improvements for developers include:

  • Changes to the XLL SDK — The XLL Software Development Kit (SDK) now supports calling new worksheet functions, developing asynchronous user-defined functions, developing cluster-safe user-defined functions that can be offloaded to a compute cluster, and building 64-bit XLL add-ins.
  • VBA improvements — Excel 2010 has a number of features that will enable you to migrate any remaining Excel 4.0 macros you may have to VBA. Improvements include better performance for print-related methods and chart properties not previously accessible with VBA.
  • Better user-interface extensibility — If you develop custom workbook solutions, you have more options for programmatically customizing both the ribbon and the new Backstage view. For example, you can programmatically activate tabs on the ribbon, and make custom tabs behave similarly to built-in contextual tabs, where tabs only appear when specific events occur. In addition, you can make custom ribbon groups grow and shrink as the ribbon is resized and customize context menus with rich controls. You can also add custom UI and other elements to the Backstage view.
  • Changes to the Open XML SDK — The Open XML SDK 2.0 now supports schema-level objects, in addition to the part-level support introduced in the Open XML SDK 1.0. This makes it easier to programmatically manipulate workbooks and other documents outside the Office 2010 desktop applications—for example, as part of a server-based solution.

Support for High-Performance Computing

Many organizations rely on high-performance computing (HPC) clusters to increase computational scale. For example, a financial firm might use compute clusters to speed up long-running, calculation-intensive financial models. Excel 2010 includes the ability to integrate with HPC clusters. When a supported cluster is available, users can instruct Excel to use that cluster by selecting a connector and configuring a name to use in the ‘Advanced‘ options of the Excel Options dialog box.

What’s the difference between Excel
2007 and Excel 2003?

Researching

What’s the difference between
Excel 2003 and Excel 2002/XP?

Researching

What’s the difference between
Excel 2002/XP and Excel 2000?

Note: Excel 2002 is also known as Excel XP.

Researching

What’s the difference between
Excel 2000 and Excel 97?

Researching

Microsoft Excel 800px-Microsoft Office Excel (2018–present).svg.png is a spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It features calculation and computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Excel is a part of the Microsoft Office productivity suite.

History

Early 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. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with Macintosh version 2.2) on November 19, 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by the early 1990s, 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 GUI software. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so.

Microsoft Excel 2.1 included a runtime version of Windows 2.1

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 of 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 on Windows still consists of a stylized 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 organized 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 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.

Versions

‘Excel 97’ (8.0) being run on Windows XP

Microsoft Excel 2003 running under Windows XP Home Edition

Excel 2003 icon

Versions for Microsoft Windows include:

  • 1987 Excel 2 for Windows*
  • 1990 Excel 3
  • 1992 Excel 4 included in Microsoft Office 3.0
  • 1993 Excel 5 (Office 4.2 & 4.3, also a 32-bit version for Windows NT only on the PowerPC, DEC Alpha, and MIPS)
  • 1995 Excel for Windows 95 (version 7) included in Microsoft Office 95*
  • 1997 Excel 97 (version 8) included in Microsoft Office 97 (x86 and also a DEC Alpha version)
  • 1999 Excel 2000 (version 9) included in Microsoft Office 2000
  • 2001 Excel 2002 (version 10) included in Microsoft Office XP
  • 2003 Excel 2003 (version 11) included in Microsoft Office 2003
  • 2007 Excel 2007 (version 12) included in Microsoft Office 2007
  • 2010 Excel 2010 (version 14) included in Microsoft Office 2010
  • 2012 Excel 2013 (version 15) included in Microsoft Office 2013
  • 2015 Excel 2016 (version 16) included in Microsoft Office 2016
  • 2018 Excel 2019 (version 16) included in Microsoft Office 2019
  • 2021 Excel 2021 (version 16) included in Microsoft Office 2021

Note: There is no Excel 1.0, in order to avoid confusion with Apple versions.

Note: There is no Excel 6.0, because the Windows 95 version was launched with Word 7. All the Office 95 & Office 4.X products have OLE 2 capacity — moving data automatically from various programs — and Excel 7 should show that it was contemporary with Word 7.

Versions for the Apple Macintosh include:

  • 1985 Excel 1.0
  • 1988 Excel 1.5
  • 1989 Excel 2.2
  • 1990 Excel 3.0
  • 1992 Excel 4.0 (part of Microsoft Office 3.0 for Macintosh)
  • 1994 Excel 5.0 (part of Microsoft Office 4.2 for Macintosh, first PowerPC version)
  • 1998 Excel 8.0 (part of Microsoft Office 98 Macintosh Edition)
  • 2000 Excel 9.0 (part of Microsoft Office 2001)
  • 2001 Excel 10.0 (part of Microsoft Office v. X)
  • 2004 Excel 11.0 (part of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac)
  • 2008 Excel 12.0 (part of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac)
  • 2010 Excel 14.0 (part of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011)
  • 2015 Excel 15.0 (part of Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac)
  • 2018 Excel 2019 (part of Microsoft Office 2019 for Mac)
  • 2021 Excel 2021 (part of Microsoft Office 2021 for Mac)

Versions for OS/2 include:

  • 1989 Excel 2.2
  • 1990 Excel 2.3
  • 1991 Excel 3.0

File formats

Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) as its primary format. Excel 2007 uses Office Open XML as its primary file format, an XML-based container similar in design to XML-based format called «XML Spreadsheet» («XMLSS»), first introduced in Excel 2002. The latter format is not able to encode VBA macros.

Although supporting and encouraging the use of new XML-based formats as replacements, Excel 2007 is still backwards compatible with the traditional, binary, formats. In addition, most versions of Microsoft Excel are able to read CSV, DBF, SYLK, DIF, and other legacy formats.

Microsoft Excel 2007 Office Open XML formats

Microsoft Excel 2007, along with the other products in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, introduces a host of new file formats. These are part of the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.

The new Excel 2007 formats are:

Excel Workbook (.xlsx)
The default Excel 2007 workbook format. In reality a ZIP compressed archive with a directory structure of XML text documents. Functions as the primary replacement for the former binary .xls format, although it does not support Excel macros for security reasons.
Excel Macro-enabled Workbook (.xlsm)
As Excel Workbook, but with macro support.
Excel Binary Workbook (.xlsb)
As Excel Macro-enabled Workbook, but storing information in binary form rather than XML documents for opening and saving documents more quickly and efficiently. Intended especially for very large documents with tens of thousands of rows, and/or several hundreds of columns.
Excel Macro-enabled Template (.xltm)
A template document that forms a basis for actual workbooks, with macro support. The replacement for the old .xlt format.
Excel Add-in (.xlam)
Excel add-in to add extra functionality and tools. Inherent macro support due to the file purpose.

Exporting and Migration of spreadsheets

APIs are also provided to open excel spreadsheets in a variety of other applications and environments other than Microsoft Excel. These include opening excel documents on the web using either ActiveX controls,or plugins like the Adobe Flash Player. Attempts have also been made to be able to copy excel spreadsheets to web applications using comma-separated values].

Criticism

Due to Excel’s foundation on floating point calculations, the statistical accuracy of Excel has been criticized, as has the lack of certain statistical tools. Excel proponents have responded that some of these errors represent edge cases and that the relatively few users who would be affected by these know of them and have workarounds and alternatives.

Excel incorrectly assumes that 1900 is a leap year. The bug originated from Lotus 1-2-3, and was implemented in Excel for the purpose of backward compatibility. This legacy has later been carried over into Office Open XML file format. Excel also supports the second date format based on year 1904 epoch.

Criticisms of spreadsheets in general also apply significantly to Excel. See Spreadsheet shortcomings.

Errors in Excel 2007

Screen shot of Microsoft Excel 2007 showing the 65,535 display error

On September 22, 2007 it was reported that Excel 2007 will show incorrect results in certain situations. Specifically, for some pairs of numbers with a product of 65,535 (such as 850 and 77.1), Excel will report their product as 100,000. This occurs with about 14.5% of such pairs. In addition, if one is added to this result, Excel will give 100,001. However, if one is subtracted from the original product, the correct result of 65,534 is reported. (Also if it is multiplied or divided by 2, the correct answers 131,070 and 32,767.5 are reported, respectively.)

Microsoft has reported on the Microsoft Excel Blog that the problem exists in the display of six specific floating point values between 65534.99999999995 and 65,535, and six values between 65535.99999999995 and 65,536 (not including the integers). Any calculation that results in one of these twelve values will be displayed incorrectly. The actual value stored and passed to other cells is correct, only the displayed value is wrong. However, some instances, such as rounding the value to zero decimal places, will result in an incorrect value in memory. The error was introduced with changes made to the Excel calculation logic for the 2007 version, and does not exist in previous versions. On October 9, 2007, Microsoft released a fix to the public.
Chris Lomont presented a detailed explanation of the bug, how it was likely caused by changing 16-bit formatting code to 32-bit code, why it only affects 12 values and then only while formatting, and how the hotfix corrects the bug.

References

  1. Buy Microsoft Excel, Microsoft. Accessed 2022-01-12.

External links

  • Microsoft Excel at Microsoft 365
  • Excel Files Generation with .net framework
  • A variety of links offering mainly free Excel Help by Microsoft recognized Most Valued Professionals
  • Microsoft Excel at Wikipedia

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Wikipedia

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Особенности программы Excel

Может функционировать как в настольных системах Windows, рабочих станциях и серверном поле (реализация NT), так и в MAC OS. Разработчики не забыли и про мобильные устройства. Полноценная работа в Excel возможна на планшетах, нетбуках и других аппаратах. Новые версии Excel получили способность быстрее проводить форматирование таблиц. Кроме того, разработчики внедрили систему автоматической корректировки, подсказывающей пользователю оптимальные варианты представления вписанных данных. Есть возможность в черновом режиме «Page Layout» увидеть отображение документа в печатной форме и вручную исправить положение, размер и границы таблиц. Впечатляет работа функции «Flash fill». Она сканирует действия юзера в реальном времени и, основываясь на них, выдает прогнозируемые варианты заполнения табличного поля. К примеру, при операции сокращения имени или отчества одного человека в столбце с множеством элементов, выпадет список, предлагающий применить действие ко всем членам. Задействована также анимация в отображении таблиц, что улучшает восприятие и наглядность.

Функциональность Excel

Поддержка программой платформы HTML5 и исполнительной схемы JavaScript позволяет осуществлять комплектацию документа аудио, видео и анимации. Это обеспечивает режим интерактивности представляемому табличному документу как в режиме «одни-на-один», так и в онлайн-клиенте. Все файлы процессора Excel, работающего в комплекте офисного приложения, сохраняются на облачном сервисе. Организациям Майкрософт предлагает бизнес-вариант Excel – самый продвинутый тип программы. В ней реализованы функции для создания многофункциональных аналитических таблиц: PowerPivot и View, а также Quick Explore. Первый инструмент дает возможность манипулировать данными многомерного представления прямо в таблице. Кросс табличный обзор, выполняемый приложением Quick Explore в совокупности с утилитой PowerView, собирающей все данные (графические файлы, диаграммы) и комплектующей в одно окно, обеспечивают высокую информативность готовому документу.

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