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Forty Years of Excel, Still in the Toolbox
The very first version of Excel shipped on 30 September 1985. Forty years later it is still the most loved, and occasionally otherwise regarded, tool in controlling.
It has been with me for a good while: from the first database I built myself, through endless business case spreadsheets as a consultant, to today, where Excel is still in the toolbox but no longer has to solve everything on its own.
Three fun facts for the anniversary.
It was nearly called Master Plan. The project codename at Microsoft was Odyssey, and the candidate product names included Master Plan and Mr. Spreadsheet. Fitting, given that many budgets were managed for years in exactly that way: in one master sheet.
It did not run on Windows at first. Excel debuted on the Mac, where the graphical interface and mouse control were the leap forward at the time.
The arithmetic did not always work. There was a display bug where results around 65,535 were shown as 100,000, for instance 77.1 times 850. The internal value was correct, only the display was not. Microsoft fixed it quickly.
Here is to the next forty years. But please without macros that break everything in the middle of the night.