About Excel Software
Microsoft Excel has grown from humble beginnings to become one of the most used software programs today. As one of the most versatile programs in the Microsoft Office Suite, this program helps millions of people daily. Excel's features and options allow users to customize the program to do almost any task they need. However, Excel's journey to dominance was not an easy one.
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What is Excel?
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Microsoft Excel is the spreadsheet program in the Microsoft Office Suite. It provides an area on the screen which numbers and text can be entered into rows and columns for easy viewing of an assortment of data. Each file is called a "workbook" with each workbook having multiple "sheets." These sheets can be linked via various equations for an even greater ease of use.
What is Excel used for?
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Microsoft Excel can be used for a variety of tasks. Its primary use is for financial analysis and has multiple calculating functions, graphing tools, and pivot tables used for accounting and finance. However, due to its versatility, it is used for a huge assortment of data analysis. Today, Excel spreadsheets are used for everything from simple to-do lists, revenue tracking sheets, grading systems, and even elementary floor plans. Microsoft is also compatible with Visual Basic, a programming language which allows users to change Excel to suit their needs.
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Beginnings
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This program started its life as a basic spreadsheet program called Multiplan. Multiplan was released in 1982 on the MS-DOS platform. Most people were already using another spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3, for DOS, and Multiplan was slow to catch on. In order to get to a different market, Microsoft repackaged the software as Microsoft Excel and released it on the Mac computer in 1985 and for their Windows Operating System in 1987. Because Lotus was slow to make the transition to Windows, Excel quickly became the spreadsheet of choice.
Problems
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Microsoft ran into problems with the Excel software in 1993. They were sued by another software company who had financial software on the market, also called Excel. The courts found against Microsoft which required them to call the product Microsoft Excel in all literature. Microsoft finally bought the trademark to the other product, which once again allowed them to refer to their product as "Excel."
Today
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Today, Excel is on its twelfth version, released as part of the Microsoft 2007 Office Suite. This version of Excel has greater usability and newer file formats to control different aspects of the program. The menu structure has completely changed and is now more intuitive, allowing users to be more productive with the software.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit http://blogs.uakron.edu/softwaretraining/files/2008/10/excel_icon1.png
