Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Office Excel is a spreadsheet spreadsheet application program created and distributed by Microsoft Corporation that can run on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. This application has a feature of calculation and graphics that, using the aggressive Microsoft marketing strategy, makes Microsoft Excel as one of the popular computer programs used in microcomputers to date. In fact, this program is currently a spreadsheet program most widely used by many parties, both on Windows-based PC platform and Mac OS based Macintosh platform, since version 5.0 was published in 1993. This application is part of the Microsoft Office System, and the latest version is version of Microsoft Office Excel 2013 that is integrated in the package of Microsoft Office System 2013.


History
In 1982, Microsoft created a spreadsheet program called Multiplan, which is very popular in CP / M systems, but not in the MS-DOS system considering there already stands its rival, the Lotus 1-2-3. This led Microsoft to start developing a new spreadsheet program called Excel, with the aim, as Doug Klunder says, "do everything 1-2-3 does and do it better / does what it does 1-2-3 and better yet ".

The first version of Excel was released for the Macintosh in 1985 and its Windows version followed (numbered version 2.0) in November 1987. Lotus was late for the spreadsheet program market for Windows, and in that year Lotus 1-2-3 was still MS- DOS. In 1988, Excel began to shift 1-2-3 in the market share of spreadsheet programs and make Microsoft as one of the leading software application developers for personal computers that are reliable. This achievement confirms Microsoft as a very strong competitor for 1-2-3 and even they develop it better. Microsoft, using its advantages, releases new versions of Excel every two years, and the latest version of Excel for Windows is Microsoft Office Excel 2010 (Excel 14), while for Macintosh (Mac OS X), the final version is Excel for Mac.

In the early days of its launch, Excel was subjected to the demands of other companies engaged in the financial industry that had sold a software that also had the name Excel. Finally, Microsoft ended the demands with defeat and Microsoft had to rename Excel to "Microsoft Excel" in all Microsoft press releases and documents. However, in practice, this is ignored and even Microsoft bought Excel from the company that previously demanded them, so the use of the Excel name alone will not bring any more trouble. Microsoft also often uses the letters XL as an abbreviation for the program, which although not common, the icon used by the program still consists of two letters (although given some style of writing). Additionally, the default extension of a spreadsheet created by Microsoft Excel to version 11.0 (Excel 2003) is * .xls whereas starting Microsoft Office Excel 2007 (version 12.0) its default extension is * .xlsx that supports HTML format but with the same content has a smaller file size when compared with previous versions of Excel.

Excel offers many interface advantages compared to previous spreadsheet programs, but the essence is still the same as VisiCalc (the famous spreadsheet software for the first time): Cells are arranged in rows and columns, and contain data or formulas with absolute references or references relative to other cells. Excel is the first spreadsheet program that allows users to define how views of the spreadsheets they edit: fonts, character attributes, and the appearance of each cell. Excel also offers intelligent recalculation of cells, where only cell-related cells will be updated (where other spreadsheet programs will recalculate the entire data or wait for a specific command from the user). In addition, Excel also offers excellent graphics processing features.

When first bundled into Microsoft Office in 1993, Microsoft redesigned the interface display used by Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint to match the look of Microsoft Excel, which at that time became the most preferred spreadsheet application. Since 1993 Excel has had a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language, which can add Excel's ability to automate in Excel and also add user-defined functions (UDF) for use in in the worksheet. In later versions, Microsoft even added an integrated development environment (IDE) for the VBA language for Excel, making it easier for programmers to create their own programming. In addition, Excel can also record all that is done by the user to become a macro, so it is able to automate some tasks. VBA also allows the creation of forms and controls contained in the worksheet to communicate with its users. VBA languages ​​also support the use of ActiveX / COM DLLs, although they can not create them. The VBA version further adds support to the class module thus allowing the use of object-oriented programming techniques in VBA

The automation function provided by VBA makes Excel a target for macro viruses. This is a very serious problem in the corporate world until antivirus makers start adding support to detect and clean macro viruses from Excel files. Finally, though too late, Microsoft also integrates functions to prevent misuse of macros by disabling macros in its entirety, or disabling macros when enabling workbooks, or trusting encrypted macros using trusted digital certificates.