Microsoft Excel may not be the most exciting computer program ever released, but it has proven to be one of the most enduring.
Nearly forty years ago, Bill Gates’ original spreadsheet was launched with the simple goal of giving accountants a faster way to crunch numbers.
But as these nostalgic photos show, that first piece of software looked very different from the complex tool office workers would recognize today.
Over the past forty years, the program has evolved from a clunky, black-and-white system for adding tables to a colorful, AI-powered math juggernaut.
Originally released on September 30, 1985, development on this iconic piece of software actually began in November of the previous year.
That makes Windows’ iconic app even older than the Windows operating system itself.
And while it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, Excel has now become the spreadsheet of choice for an estimated 1.1 billion people.
This month, Microsoft Excel enters its 40th year. Development of the program began in 1984, but version 1 (pictured) was first released on September 30, 1985, exclusively for the Macintosh computer.
Although it is one of Microsoft’s flagship products, Excel actually started its life on Apple computers.
Beginning in November 1984, Bill Gates’ engineers began developing Excel to replace Microsoft’s older Multiplan spreadsheet program.
In 1985, the software was launched at the Tavern on the Green restaurant in New York as an exclusive for the Apple Macintosh.
Compared to the modern version, Excel version 1 was relatively simple, but already contained many of the same recognizable features.
Users could create complex tables, use the system to perform calculations, sort data and create simple graphs.
Despite how clunky it looks by modern standards, Excel quickly gained a reputation for its power and ease of use.
In a 1985 review in MacUser magazine, one reviewer wrote, “Excel is the Uzi submachine gun of the business world.”
However, it was not until September of the following year that Microsoft launched the software on the Windows operating system.
Microsoft launched Excel for Windows computers in 1986 with the Windows 2 operating system. This added more color options and expanded memory
At the time, Excel’s main competition was software called ‘1-2-3’ produced by Lotus Software.
This software was built specifically to run on IBM’s powerful new personal computers and was considered very advanced for the time.
When Excel was first released, 1-2-3 dominated the spreadsheet application market, surpassing Microsoft’s previous software.
But when Excel first appeared on Windows computers, people were immediately impressed with how much easier it was to learn and use.
Microsoft’s new software was so much simpler that Excel overtook 1-2-3 as the most popular spreadsheet software in the early 1990s.
Although this acquisition would be the death knell for Lotus Software, it strengthened Microsoft’s position as one of the largest players in the software industry.
Microsoft continued to update the software regularly until Excel and the rest of the ‘Office’ apps received an overhaul for the launch of Windows 95 in 1995.
Excel 95 is particularly notable for an ‘Easter Egg’ that was hidden in the software during development.
Excel received one of its biggest updates when it was relaunched for Windows 95. This version of the software is also notable for including a hidden first-person game called ‘Hall of Tortured Souls’, in which a photo of the developers was revealed .
By following a specific set of instructions in Excel, users could gain access to a secret first-person video game called ‘Hall of Tortured Souls’.
The user could walk through a 3D space to find a photo of the developers and their names.
Keeping with this tradition, Excel 97, released in 1996, also included a hidden flight simulator game that could be accessed via a secret code.
This version of the software also marked the introduction of ‘Clippy’, Microsoft’s much-maligned virtual assistant that was added to help people struggling with the software.
Starting in the year 2000, Microsoft would continue to update its software once every three years, with the most recent version released in 2021.
During its development, Microsoft Excel has become one of the most widely used and important computer programs for business worldwide.
In addition to the sheer number of users, Excel’s importance is evident from the scale of disasters attributed to poor spreadsheet formatting.
For example, in 2010, the MI5 intelligence service revealed that it had accidentally tapped 134 incorrect telephone numbers due to a ‘formatting error’ in its spreadsheets.
Windows 97 added the ‘Clippy’ Windows Assistant that would provide assistance to those struggling with the software
It later turned out that the program had been instructed to round the digits up, so that the last few digits of the phone numbers became all zeros.
Similarly, Public Health England ‘misplaced’ 15,841 positive Covid-19 test results in 2020 after employees tried to import a file that was too large for Excel to process.
Excel also became so important to research that scientists were forced to rename several human genes to prevent the software from formatting them incorrectly.
Researchers complained for years that there was no way to prevent Excel from converting gene names, such as MARCH1, to dates, such as March 1.
Ultimately, the scientists decided it was easier to rename 27 different human genes than to try to find an alternative to Excel.
And for those who really love this essential piece of software, the Microsoft Excel World Champion is even held in Las Vegas every year.