Microsoft Excel Turns 40, Remains Stubbornly Unkillable (bloomberg.com)
- Reference: 0180339737
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/09/1428239/microsoft-excel-turns-40-remains-stubbornly-unkillable
- Source link: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-microsoft-excel-ai-software/
The software traces its origins to a 1983 Microsoft offsite under the code name Odyssey, where engineers set out to clone Lotus 1-2-3. That program had itself cloned VisiCalc, the first computerized spreadsheet, created by Dan Bricklin for the Apple II in the late 1970s. Bricklin never patented VisiCalc. "Financially it would have been great if we'd have been able to patent it," he told Bloomberg. "And there would be a Bricklin Building at MIT, instead of a Gates Building."
Excel now counts an estimated 500 million paying users. The Pentagon pays for 2 million Microsoft 365 licenses. Google's free Sheets product, launched in 2006, captured casual use cases like potluck sign-ups but failed to dislodge Excel from enterprise work. AI chatbots present the latest challenge, but venture capitalists say nearly every AI spreadsheet startup they meet builds on top of Excel rather than replacing it.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-microsoft-excel-ai-software/
Meanwhile (Score:3, Informative)
I've run along for years using one or the other Open Office applications. Right now, I'm using Libre Office and their spreadsheet app. It's ahem... better. It will open documents 365 won't, and it is cross platform compatible.
If people want to spend money on something they can get for free - you know what they say about fools and their money.
Re:Meanwhile (Score:5, Interesting)
It's better for you.
It's not better for a lot of businesses. The collaboration features of openoffice are sub-par. That alone excludes openoffice from most shortlists. Many businesses nowadays rely on Sharepoint. Only Google comes close to this.
Excel is by far the best in connecting to external database resources. By far the best in pivot tables. Both are extensively used for financial reporting.
Not saying Excel is perfect. But there simply is no serious competition.
Re: (Score:2)
> It's better for you.
> It's not better for a lot of businesses. The collaboration features of openoffice are sub-par. That alone excludes openoffice from most shortlists.
Then they are happy, and I am happy for them - they have found their solution. Ten again - If you as a business have zero options. than A Microsoft product, if the very success is predicated on Office 365, without which it all falls apart - you've created a monoculture.
Re: (Score:3)
That was me, too. Excel was absolutely essential to my productivity as a data-slinger, managing real-word data into and back out of largish SQL databases. The ability to just refresh a pivot table from SQL was an automatic one-click updated report, with no code.
I could do a whole bunch of massaging of data from plain text files, notes, cut-and-paste from other applications - or I could do several Excel formulas and maybe a short macro, and process tens of thousands of records into the big database.
It wa
Re: (Score:2)
> That was me, too. Excel was absolutely essential to my productivity as a data-slinger, managing real-word data into and back out of largish SQL databases. The ability to just refresh a pivot table from SQL was an automatic one-click updated report, with no code.
> I could do a whole bunch of massaging of data from plain text files, notes, cut-and-paste from other applications - or I could do several Excel formulas and maybe a short macro, and process tens of thousands of records into the big database.
> It was about far more than "modelling" it was a swiss army knife of data massaging, reformatting, and above all, data-cleaning.
Whenever I get data in excel I cringe. The data will almost always be mangled requiring me to go back to the source and ask them to change their workflow.
Just before Thanksgiving I received a spreadsheet full of serial numbers. The serial numbers with letters in them were fine. The serial numbers that were all numeric all ended with a 0 due to irreversible loss of precision.
Decades ago I loved seeing all the shit people would come up with in excel, access and oracle forms. It let people who do not get p
Re: (Score:2)
> Many businesses nowadays rely on Sharepoint [for collaboration].
and while often loathed, it can be very nice to use if you have a custom front end via forms/HTML and 3rd party workflows for automation.
one talented dev is enough for implementation.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't do anything that sophisticated and I have to admit even I noticed the performance difference between OpenOffice calc and Excel...
I suspect that is because Microsoft is withholding software libraries and techniques from the open Office team which would very much be in antitrust violation but we don't enforce those laws so that's kind of a moot point.
I cannot imagine what it would be like using OpenOffice for one of those really really huge spreadsheets that are basically poorly implemented da
Re:Meanwhile (Score:4, Insightful)
File formats, I could understand being an anti-trust issue, but I can't see how MS would be required to give their "libraries" to OpenOffice.
Re: (Score:1)
> I suspect that is because Microsoft is withholding software libraries and techniques from the open Office team which would very much be in antitrust violation
You suspect, eh? Have any of the openoffice or libreoffice developers complained of this? When you say "techniques," do you expect Excel developers to blog about or document every code performance trick they've used? Microsoft's Excel software is proprietary. Keeping the source code non-public is the default position for proprietary code, it isn't some unusual form of withholding. Making better software than opensource competitors isn't anti-competitive. Microsoft isn't obligated to give up whatever secret
Re: (Score:2)
The speed of Excel are due to the core functions being written in finely tuned assembler, or at least they were in the past. It's not a secret. It's just not easily to duplicate in an open source way.
Re: (Score:1)
> I suspect that is because Microsoft is withholding software libraries and techniques from the open Office team which would very much be in antitrust violation but we don't enforce those laws so that's kind of a moot point.
How are you so consistently full of it?
As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.
You've spouted nothing but nonsense for years. Actual years.
Re: (Score:2)
> I suspect that is because Microsoft is withholding software libraries and techniques from the open Office team which would very much be in antitrust violation
That is not how antitrust laws work in any place on the planet. And the rest of the places definitely do enforce their laws.
Re: (Score:3)
Also I almost laughed at that one: "Google's free Sheets product, launched in 2006, captured casual use cases like potluck sign-ups but failed to dislodge Excel from enterprise work"... Google apps were excellent for a V1. We've been waiting for a V2 ever since. It is terribly lacking in functionality.
Re: (Score:2)
> Also I almost laughed at that one: "Google's free Sheets product, launched in 2006, captured casual use cases like potluck sign-ups but failed to dislodge Excel from enterprise work"... Google apps were excellent for a V1. We've been waiting for a V2 ever since. It is terribly lacking in functionality.
I tried it once ugh - not ready fro prime time. One of my guys seems to love it, he must have a really low bar. I have people on Windows, Mac and Linux. And Microsoft has no solution for that. Unless things have changed a lot, Windows office doesn't do well when trading files. I remember when people were making posters in Poerpoint, the files they made were on a Windows machine, and PowerPoint assumed that was the size print to use. When we changed it to our large format printer on the Macs, it exploded, n
Re: Meanwhile (Score:2)
Typical "but it works for me, and everyone else is a fool. âoe reply.
I am a systems biologist regularly handles tons of genetic, spectroscopic and clinical data. I often want to use a spreadsheet to look at data structure, even it is only to write extraction and curation scripts. As much I hate Excel, I have repeatedly seen the Calc is crappier and especially so on MacOS.
People have different requirements and priorities. And MS Office as a whole is like 60 bucks a year. Well worth it to avoid the catas
Re: (Score:2)
> Typical "but it works for me, and everyone else is a fool. Ãoe reply.
> I am a systems biologist regularly handles tons of genetic, spectroscopic and clinical data. I often want to use a spreadsheet to look at data structure, even it is only to write extraction and curation scripts
Excel is dumpster with a hole rusted through the bottom leaving a trail of garbage everywhere it goes.
"A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions."
[1]https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com]
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
Re: (Score:2)
>> Typical "but it works for me, and everyone else is a fool. Ãoe reply.
>> I am a systems biologist regularly handles tons of genetic, spectroscopic and clinical data. I often want to use a spreadsheet to look at data structure, even it is only to write extraction and curation scripts
> Excel is dumpster with a hole rusted through the bottom leaving a trail of garbage everywhere it goes.
> "A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions."
> [1]https://link.springer.com/arti... [springer.com]
I think it might even be more errors in Excel than 1/5th, but I'll go with your cite.
I like a nice spreadsheet - I use them for design applications in electronics. But some of the stuff I've seen bean counters and a few others always evoke the "Hold on a second, something's not right here!" response.
But many people believe that if it is in Excel, it is correct.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-016-1044-7
Re: (Score:2)
> Typical "but it works for me, and everyone else is a fool. âoe reply.
> I am a systems biologist regularly handles tons of genetic, spectroscopic and clinical data. I often want to use a spreadsheet to look at data structure, even it is only to write extraction and curation scripts. As much I hate Excel, I have repeatedly seen the Calc is crappier and especially so on MacOS.
> People have different requirements and priorities. And MS Office as a whole is like 60 bucks a year. Well worth it to avoid the catastrophe that is Impress. FWIW, Writer seems the least bad component of Libreoffice for my use cases.
You mad bro? You never heard "A fool and his Money are soon parted?
I apologize profusely for introducing humor into a place with humorless people. May you always have to use software you hate.
LANPAR (Score:5, Informative)
As to VisiCalk being the real OG that started from nothing, there's an interesting comment on a VisiCalc youtube:
> In 1969, we had to develop the world's true first electronic spreadsheet (LANPAR) within the limitation of 32k of memory - and we included forward referencing which didn't appear in Visicalc, TKSolver, Supercalc or even Multiplan I. Only in Lotus 13 years later. We even included the ability for sophisticated logic calculations, access to external data base data, and input of data in real time. Timesharing in those days was very similar to "cloud" computing now, except that you knew exactly which remote computer was doing the processing.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii3PDjJCCQ4
Re: (Score:2)
I came to say something similar
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreadsheet#History
Ok (Score:1)
So Bricklin would not have gotten a patent, that's all that means. With a 10 year head start LANPAR amounted to nothing because instead of targeting a cheap computer that sold millions of units to just about anyone who saw the need (hence the phrase "killer app" -- you would buy an Apple II or later an IBM PC specifically to run Visicalc) they targeted a mainframe. So if you worked at a company that already had a mainframe, and you could justify the cost to the MIS department getting a terminal (which itsel
Re: (Score:1)
> So Bricklin would not have gotten a patent, that's all that means.
Similar happened for lawsuits over dBASE's IP. With a little digging, a couple of similar languages and systems were found for older bigger computers. There was very little in dBASE that was original. The cloners just used synonyms for commands and key-words.
DOS did similar word-play per CP/M. In the early days of software, almost everyone was a dirty rat-thief, perhaps because patenting software was a legally murky area.
Every firm I've worked at (Score:3)
Every firm I've worked at has Excel on the issued machine and yes we use it constantly. Nope, I'm not an accountant. Just my opinion, but it is still the best of class when it comes to spreadsheet applications and probably why O365 is doing so well.
Re: (Score:2)
But often it ends up the wrong tool for the job, used like a database or application. When the person who made the spaghetti-sheets leaves, everyone is left scratching their heads.
MS-Access would be a better fit, but it's often frowned upon because amateurs have also damaged its reputation. It's possible to write maintenance-friendly apps with MS-Access, it's just not tuned that way out of the box, and "maintain-ifying" an app is not taught.
(Web equivalents of MS-Access so far suck. The web ruins every CRUD
I only use Excel (Score:1)
because I'm old and not cool. All the cool kids are using VisiCalc.
I use Excel more then any other tool (Score:2)
I work for a Fortune 100 company and most of my day is working with Excel. Every aspect of the business is ultimately sourced and shared through Excel. If you took Excel away our business would grind to a halt in a matter of hours.
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo.
I asked a friend who started enthusiastically using AI for coding, used it happily for various business bits of writing, summaries, etc.
So I asked him if he had to give up one tool: "AI" (all of them) or "The spreadsheet", he thought for about 10 seconds and said, "AI" for sure: you're in and out of Excel all day long.
Oh great! (Score:2)
> The Pentagon pays for 2 million Microsoft 365 licenses.
Because having all that day-to-day military data in the cloud, managed by a private-sector company whose primary business is data-rape, is a sterling choice for managing national security. Srsly, WTF?
Re: (Score:2)
Some country in Europe started migrating their defense operations to Libreoffice for this reason. Possibly Germany.
Libre Office (Score:2)
Unfortunately for Microsoft you are correct, the rest of the world cannot trust any USA company for critical operations due to the polical dangers. Besides the obvious data concerns, an angry dictator might suddenly add 1000% export taxes on software, or demand it be broken or hamstrung, etc. So I don't blame other governments for moving to Libre. I think a company like Microsoft might be better off headquartered in a stable democracy.
Re:Oh great! (Score:4, Informative)
No, they have their own cloud, they don't use the consumer one
Well, Excel did kill Multiplan (Score:2)
Microsoft's DOS based spreadsheet.
Good product (Score:2)
One of the view pieces of software I have that almost never crashes and almost always does what I want.
One of the core applications I require on a computer to be minimally useful . The others being a mail client, a web browse and a word processor.
Want MS Office Dead? Donate to LibrieOffice : ) (Score:2)
[1]https://www.libreoffice.org/do... [libreoffice.org]
[1] https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/
Re: (Score:2)
After years of development, the LibreOffice people haven't realized that the only way to beat Office is to become Office. LibreCalc should seek to be as close to a pixel perfect clone of Excel as possible. Like it or not, Excel is essentially the POSIX standard for spreadsheets, and building anything that doesn't follow that standard will always be third tier.
But thanks to Copilot... (Score:3)
But thanks to the addition of Copilot, Microsoft is doing their best to kill it.
Nobody has killed the hammer (Score:2)
so there are tools that don't need changing. Software needs to get a clue on that.
"Kill" excel? (Score:2)
Tell me you don't do actual work without outright saying it.
The kind of people who are wanting/trying/thinking about killing excel are, in my view the same people who believe the same thing about email, and think you can do useful ongoing work communication on teams or other shit-chat platforms.
Re: (Score:2)
You got that right. From a practical perspective, it's the best tool for the job most of the time. With one exception, Google Sheets is better when when many people are collaborating on the same sheet. Excel seems to choke a lot when its shared.
Deep features keep legacy software going (Score:2)
Just a few weeks ago there was a slashdot post via the Reigster giving a good clue as to why people still pay for it versus LibreOffice/OpenOffice versions or Google Sheets:
" [1]Finance, for example, still relies on Excel [theregister.com] because Google Sheets can't handle the necessary file sizes, as some spreadsheets involve 20 million cells. "Some of the limitations was just the number of cells that you could have in one single file. We'll definitely start to remove some of the work," Jestin told The Register."
You might say
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/microsoft_airbus_migration/
Never learned Excel and never will (Score:2)
45 year old executive with 25 year career in software development. Have never learned Excel, and never will. Give me plain old SQL any day.
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer SQL too, but I'm never going to let end users touch sql. a SQL Data connection Query Into an Excel sheet, is a quick low effort way to provide those results to end users. One of the reasons I find Excel especially useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really the same usage.
Avoid Excel, install LibreOffice Calc.
Re: Never learned Excel and never will (Score:2)
Libreoffice is the same junk, different pile. It uses the same junky language.
I have no interest in learning the hack excel equation syntax.
Re: (Score:2)
You probably should familiarize yourself with or, if you have an allergy to Microsoft, OpenOffice/LibreOffice Calc. It's a good general purpose data manipulation tool. There are things it does badly, but other things that are better than anything else in its class.
I definitely wouldn't brag about not knowing it, that's like boasting you've never used a personal computer.
Re: Never learned Excel and never will (Score:2)
The same shitty language is used. No thanks. Spreadsheets are garbage.
Excel runs the world (Score:1)
There is a surprising amount of information that is stored in Excel sheets. Most governments, business, universities, etc run on Excel. It's also something Microsoft hasn't broken.
Funny thing word sucks balls. Word is worse than 25 year old competitors such as Word Perfect, but because it is bundled with Excel, Word has became the default word processor for most people.
Re: (Score:2)
So true. I think Excel is the only Microsoft product that is any good at all. Everything else is total garbage. It's a shame no one has just made a true clone of it. Not a sort of copy with different shortcuts, formulas and menu layouts, but a true clone.
2 million? (Score:3)
The Pentagon pays for 2 million Microsoft 365 licenses
wut? I don't know how this can even be possible. What is going on
Re: (Score:2)
Probably one for every employee.
Re: (Score:2)
The Department of Defense has millions of military and civilian employees.
They probably aren't even buying as many as they should on bulk licensing and off-internet servers.
Re: (Score:3)
The US armed forces are 2.8 million strong. The DoD employs about million more civilians on top of that. That's not even counting contractors that the DoD may be buying licenses for. 2 million Microsoft 365 licenses doesn't seem that outlandish.
Re: (Score:2)
Also at that scale who knows how much they are paying for each seat, I'm sure it's a bespoke deal. No doubt MS is making money, but I wouldn't just take the retail price and multiply it by 2 million.
Re: (Score:3)
They're almost certainly paying for O365 licenses, not specific Excel licenses. This includes the Office Suite (Word, PPT, maybe Access, etc. depending on license.) There are probably tiers of licenses assigned, so not one price per user, and there is likely a large volume discount. We don't have enough info to calculate, but the claim that they are paying for "2 million Excel licenses" is likely a bit misleading.
Re: (Score:2)
I assume "the pentagon" includes the over 2 million military personnel who need to access their email
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
In May DOGE deactivated more than a HALF MILLION credit cards that were just floating around in Gov't slush drawers that couldn't be attributed to a specific employee, and this was noted as "nearly 10% of all the official credit cards held by the federal govt"...meaning the gov't had 5 MILLION open cc accounts.
Re: (Score:1)
That's DOGE's side of the story. Many employees found out they had to use their personal card for work travel and then file paperwork for reimbursement. That extra paperwork is created and processed on tax-payer's dime.
Cut-first-and-think-later...or quit.
Re: (Score:2)
"use their personal card for work travel and then file paperwork for reimbursement"
Oh no, you mean like 80% of businesses do?
THE HORROR that someone is actually checking this shit off and signing for it.
Oh, and then the person themselves gets the rewards for their travel which is pretty awesome, instead of the organization using some GSG9's ff miles so Hegseth can pinch the stewardii in first class.
Re: (Score:2)
> The Pentagon pays for 2 million Microsoft 365 licenses
> wut? I don't know how this can even be possible. What is going on
Indeed. Given the number of employees I would have figured it would be an order of magnitude higher than that at least. The Pentagon got an awesome deal.