Chapter One
Introduction to Excel
Excel made its debut on the Macintosh in 1985 and has never lost its position as the most popular
spreadsheet application in the Mac environment. In 1987, Excel was ported to the PC, running under
Windows. It took many years for Excel to overtake Lotus 1 2 3, which was one of the most successful
software systems in the history of computing at that time.
There were a number of spreadsheet applications that enjoyed success prior to the release of the IBM PC
in 1981. Among these were VisiCalc and Multiplan. VisiCalc started it all, but fell by the wayside early
on. Multiplan was Microsoft's predecessor to Excel, using the R1C1 cell addressing which is still
available as an option in Excel. But it was 1 2 3 that shot to stardom very soon after its release in 1982
and came to dominate the PC spreadsheet market.
Early Spreadsheet Macros
1 2 3 was the first spreadsheet app ...
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