Excel, the program spreadsheet of the office suite Microsoft Office, is probably the most popular software of its kind of all time. Can you imagine what it was like to work with charts and graphs before it existed? Perhaps you are too young to remember it, but the truth is that this application had a lot of competition.
The first version of excel It appeared in September 1985, when Windows had just been launched on the market. Even so, this was not the operating system where the program debuted, but macOS itself, present on the Macintosh that was released in 1984.
From its second version, Excel was also available in Windowsbut, by then, there were many other alternatives that already had the preference of the public, especially the office.
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Another key point was the popularity of Windows. As we have already mentioned in an event, the first versions of this OS were not very popular and it was not until the arrival of Windows 3.0 (1990) and Windows 3.1 (1992) that Microsoft was able to take over the graphical interface market.
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What were Excel’s main competitors?
In the late 1980s, personal computers still used to have DOS-style text interfaces. This operating system dominated most IBM-style computers (known as ‘IBM Compatible’) and the only OS with a graphical interface and windows that stood out at the time was that of the Apple Macintosh and IBM OS/2.
However, with the advent of Windows 3.0, microsoft managed to gain more and more notoriety. The new version of Windows was much more functional and attractive, as well as allowing DOS programs to be run natively (since it was practically a graphic mask for this system).
Back then, Excel had to take on the spreadsheet giant: Lotus 1-2-3the most popular program of this type at the time and which had replaced the famous VisiCalc (considered the first commercial spreadsheet application).
In addition to these, many other developers, such as corel, Micrograph, Borderlandsetc., were releasing their own office suites with some less powerful spreadsheets included.
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Excel: “My spreadsheet doesn’t do that”
It was not until the arrival of the version 3.0 (released in 1991, at the height of Windows 3.0) that Excel would receive some of the features that neither Lotus 1-2-3 nor other of its competitors could cope with. As evidenced by this advertisement from that time.
If you don’t speak English, we explain that the clip represents the urgency of two employees who must deliver a projection report to their boss in just minutes. One of them looks desperate, but the other expresses his calm and takes out his laptop to use and show off the new features that Excel offered at the time, such as:
- autosum
- autofill
- Ability to move a group of cells to another position
- number format
- Merge cells to create titles
- Autoformat.
Behind the two workers, other people are seen watching the scene, first with skepticism and then with amazement. On several occasions, each of them exclaims, “My spreadsheet doesn’t do that.”
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After the release of Excel 4.0 (included in the third version of Office in 1991 along with Word and Powerpoint), the fate of Lotus 1-2-3 and its other competitors was sealed. Now, Microsoft’s program continues to dominate the spreadsheet market, and its most serious competitor is Google Sheets of the Google Workspace web environment, in addition to other free and paid suites such as Libre Office, Open Office Y WPSOffice.