(full name '''Microsoft Office Excel''') is a
Spreadsheet application written and distributed by
Microsoft for
Microsoft Windows and
Mac OS . It features calculation and graphing tools which, along with aggressive marketing, have made Excel one of the most popular microcomputer applications to date. It is overwhelmingly the dominant spreadsheet application available for these platforms and has been so since version 5 in
1993 and its bundling as part of
Microsoft Office .
Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called
Multiplan in 1982, which was very popular on
CP/M systems, but on
MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to
Lotus 1-2-3 . This promoted development of a new spreadsheet called Excel which started with the intention to, in the words of
Doug Klunder , '' 'do everything 1-2-3 does and do it better' ''. The first version of Excel was released for the Mac in
1985 and the first Windows version (numbered 2.0 to line-up with the Mac and bundled with a run-time Windows environment) was released in November
1987 . Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by
1988 Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve the position of leading PC software developer. This accomplishment, dethroning the king of the software world, solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing graphical software. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so. The current version for the Windows platform is Excel 12, also called Microsoft Office Excel 2007. The current version for the Mac OS X platform is Microsoft Excel 2004.
2.1 included a
Run-time 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 to the other program. Microsoft also encouraged the use of the letters 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
GUI s 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 for
Microsoft Windows include:
- 1987 Excel 2.0 for Windows
- 1990 Excel 3.0
- 1992 Excel 4.0
- 1993 Excel 5.0 (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 7.0) - included in Office 95
- 1997 Excel 97 - (version 8.0) included in Office 97 (x86 and also a DEC Alpha version)
- 1999 Excel 2000 (version 9.0) included in Office 2000
- 2001 Excel 2002 (version 10) included in Office XP
- 2003 Excel 2003 (version 11) included in Office 2003
- 2007 Excel 2007 (version 12) included in Office 2007
- ''Notice: There is no Excel 1.0, in order to avoid confusion with Apple versions.''
- ''Notice: 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 programmes - and Excel should show that it was contemporary with Word .''
Versions for the
Apple Macintosh include:
Versions for
OS/2 include:
Microsoft Excel up until 2007 version used a proprietary binary file format called Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF) as its primary format
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840817/ . 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
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa140066(office.10).aspx . 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.
See Also: Office Open XML
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
Macro s 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.
API 's 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 .
Due to Excel's foundation on s 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 file format. Excel also supports the second date format based on year 1904
Epoch .
