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| Payroll sample |
Every enlightened human alive should be well acquainted with spreadsheets.
Why so?
Spreadsheets are a path way to financial control and prudence in today's modern world.
Spreadsheets
development summary
·
In
1978, Harvard Business School student Dan Bricklin developed a program called
VisiCalc.
·
SuperCalc
was developed by Sorcim, bundled along with WordStar.
·
In
1983, Mitch Kapor’s team developed a spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3,
although Microsoft had already developed Multiplan in 1982 that Lotus 1-2-3
outshined.
·
1985,
Microsoft Excel (Excel 1.0) with graphical interface and other exciting
features at that time.
·
Microsoft
Excel (full name Microsoft Office Excel)
·
A
spreadsheet program was written and distributed by Microsoft for computers
using the Microsoft Windows operating system and for Apple Macintosh computers.
·
Microsoft
originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982.
·
The
first version of Excel was released for the Mac in 1985 and for Windows
November 1987.
·
Lotus
1-2-3 had popularity by that time, yet by 1988 Excel had started to outsell
1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve the position of the leading PC software
developer.
·
The
accomplishment, dethroning the king of the software world, solidified Microsoft
as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing graphical software.
·
Excel
features an intuitive interface and capable calculation and graphing tools,
pivot tables, and except for some Mc editions,
·
A
macro programming language called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), which,
along with aggressive marketing, have made Excel one of the most popular
business applications to date.
·
As
the result of the dispute, Microsoft was required to refer to the program as
"Microsoft Excel" in all of its formal press releases and legal
documents.
·
However,
over time this practice has been ignored, and Microsoft cleared up the issue
permanently when they purchased the trademark to the other program.
·
Microsoft
also encouraged the use of the letters XL as shorthand for the program;
·
While
this is no longer common, the program's icon still consists of a stylized
combination of the two letters, and the file extension of the default Excel
format is .xls.
·
Excel
offers many user interface tweaks over the earliest electronic spreadsheets
·
However,
the essence remains the same as in the original spreadsheet.
·
VisiCalc:
the cells are organized in rows and columns, and contain data or formulas with
relative or absolute references to other cells.
Microsoft
Excel
·
Excel
was the first spreadsheet that allowed the user to define the appearance of
spreadsheets (fonts, character attributes, and cell appearance).
·
It
also introduced intelligent cell re-computation, where only cells dependent on
the cell being modified are updated (previous spreadsheet programs recomputed
everything all the time or waited for a specific user command).
·
Excel
has extensive graphing capabilities.
·
When
first bundled into Microsoft Office in 1993, Microsoft Word and Microsoft
PowerPoint had their GUIs redesigned for consistency with Excel, the killer app
on the PC at the time.
·
Since
1993, Excel has included Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a programming
language based on Visual Basic which adds the ability to automate tasks in
Excel and to provide user-defined functions (UDF) for use in worksheets.
·
VBA
is a powerful addition to the application which, in later versions, includes a
fully-featured integrated development environment (IDE).
·
Macro
recording can produce VBA code replicating user actions, thus allowing simple
automation of regular tasks.
·
VBA
allows the creation of forms and in-worksheet controls to communicate with the
user.
·
The
language supports use (but not creation) of ActiveX (COM) DLL's; later versions
add support for class modules allowing the use of basic object-oriented
programming (OOP) techniques.
·
The
automation functionality provided by VBA has caused Excel to become a target
for macro viruses.
·
This
was a serious problem in the corporate world until antivirus products began to
detect these viruses.
· Microsoft belatedly took steps to prevent misuse by adding the ability to disable macros completely, to enable macros when opening a workbook, or to trust all macros signed using a trusted certificate.
Excel Versions:
