employee 3005501 1920

The History of MS Excel: A timeline

The History of MS Excel

The journey of Excel started in 1987 with Excel 2.0 as the first version for Windows. There never was an Excel 1.0 for DOS or Windows. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.0 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) in November 1987.
Excel 3.0 launched in 1990s and it included tool-bars, drawing capabilities, outlining, add-in support, 3D charts among the other features.
Excel 4.0 launched in 1992 and it introduced auto-fill options in Excel.
Excel 5.0 launched in 1993 includes VBA and it had the ability to automate the tasks in excel and has the capacity to create a user-defined function(UDF) for use in worksheets.
Excel 95 (v7.0) launched in 1995 and it was more faster and stable than the previous versions. There is no Excel 6.0
Excel 97 (v8.0) was launched in 1997.It introduces the paper clip office assistant, validation, and a new interface for VBA developers.
Excel 2000 (v9.0) was launched in 1999. It was introduced with the self-repairing function of excel and improvement in the clipboard function to hold multiple objects at a time.
Excel 2002 (v10.0) it was a part of Office XP.It added multiple features but most of them are minor one. The most significant was saving the file while it crashed and recover the corrupt workbook file and also the capability of background formula auditing which identifies potential errors in the formula.
Excel 2003 (v11.0) it was a part of office 2003.Most significant was improved support for XML i.e import and export of XML files and mapping the data in specific cells of the worksheet. Also, a new “list range” feature was introduced.
Excel 2007 (v12.0) it was released in 2007.It introduces major changes(upgrade) from the previous version. The following features were introduced:

  • New ribbon menu system.
  • Smart Art set of editable business diagrams.
  • Name Manager a improved management of named variable.
  • Improvement in graph features.
  • Several features in Pivot Table was introduced.
  • No. of rows and columns were increased to 1048576 and 16348 respectively.
  • Introduction of .xlsx(default) ,.xlsm(macro enabled) and .xlsb(binary format) file format.

Excel 2010 (v14.0) was a part of office 2010 and introduced in 2010. It has minor enhancement and 64-bit support. The following important features were introduced:

  • 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

Excel 2013 (v15.0) it was a part of office 2013.The important features are as given below:

  • FlashFill an autofill feature
  • Power View for large quantities of data and data can be format, filter and sort.
  • PowerPivot which removes limitation of rows from excel 
  • Timeline Slicer
  • Improvement in graphic feature and new charting tool(recommended chart)
  • PivotTable control allows for the building of complex data models

 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 multi-selection of Slicer items using touch.
  • Time grouping and Pivot Chart Drill Down.
  • Excel data cards.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel

Leave a Comment

Scroll to Top