Back in 1978, Dan Bricklin, a student at MIT had a vision of a ‘Visible Calculator’. Along with his friend Bob Frankston, they made it a reality. Exactly 25 years ago they released their product for the Apple II computer and named it VisiCalc. It was the first computer spreadsheet and it changed everything.

Before 1979, few businesses wanted to own a computer. The most commercial PC software at the time was a game called MicroChess and most accounting departments were still operating with ledger paper and mechanical pencils. Suddenly, with the release of VisiCalc, businesses everywhere rushed out and bought PCs.

The Glory Years

By 1983, Mitch Kapor had built a better spreadsheet and his company, Lotus Development Corporation named the product Lotus 1-2-3. During the 1980s it became the dominant spreadsheet used on desktops worldwide and it seemed that Lotus had the market wrapped up.

In the early 90s however, before Windows became the dominant operating system, Lotus invested too much time and money porting their software to the CP/M operating system, whilst Microsoft rebranded their Multiplan software and released it for the fledgling Windows operating system.

1993 to 1997 were the glory years for spreadsheet development. Lotus and Microsoft were locked in a war for market share and with each successive release of their software, each company surpassed the other. Dozens of new powerful functions were added, Microsoft offering smarter spreadsheets featuring SUM formulas and automatic subtotals. Lotus followed up with multi-dimensional data, but perhaps the greatest improvement was the bundling of Visual Basic for Applications with every copy of Excel sold since 1995.

By 1997 Microsoft had won the war and became the dominant player in the spreadsheet market, but the consumer was the ultimate winner, as the spreadsheet that we use today is far more powerful than the one introduced back in 1979. Unfortunately, most people don’t appreciate its full potential.

In a poll of 3000 Excel users, less than 42% use the top 10 most powerful features and many peoples knowledge simply extends to a few minutes of on-the-job training.

After writing "Guerilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel", I began to travel around the U.S. offering one hour Excel seminars. It’s always amazing to see the stunned look when someone realises (a) There is a method that will save them hours a week and (b) That they’ve been wasting countless hours doing it the slow way.

In the most extreme case, we helped a client who had been spending 40 hours a month producing a complex report for 46 different departments. Using the copy of Visual Basic for Applications within Excel, we turned this 40 hour process into 40 seconds.

These results may not be typical for every company, but most of the 200 million Excel users can save many hours a week by learning the secret power of Excel.

Bill Jelen is author of Guerilla Data Analysis Using Microsoft Excel and co-author of VBA & Macros for Microsoft Excel (QUE).