[dayglored]

And no, Excel was NOT the world's first spreadsheet, not by a long shot.

[dayglored]

Excel turns 30 ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[blackdog]

Lotus 123 was my introduction to the 80’s.

[Ciaphas Cain]

VisiCalc. Originally hit the market in 1978. The very first "killer appp".

[PGR88]

I personally believe the introduction of the spreadsheet in the mid 80’s contributed greatly to the Wall-Street LBO and takeover boom of the 2nd half of that decade.

It was a brand new phenomenon, analysts being able to run many, various, complex financial and operating scenarios extremely quickly.

[reg45]

I remember VisiCalc, Supercalc, and Lotus 123 as well as Quattro Pro.

[TomGuy]

When I am in a hurry to do a spreadsheet, I call up Excel 97. Same with Word 97 when I need a word-processor. They are both easier to use than the convoluted ribbon menu in the versions that come with later Windows.

[Nifster]

Thirty is not middle aged

[Dalberg-Acton]

Excel is not any good for working with dates prior to 1900.

[SoFloFreeper]

not only that, but 30 is NOT “middle age”.

[buckalfa]

After having failed as a manager of people, Excel allowed me to find an employment niche I could be successful with. Colorful charts and graphs chock full of meaningless information for upper management.

[ßuddaßudd]

I use everyday at werkz..

[norwaypinesavage]

My first spreadsheet was Lotus 1 2 3, along which came along with WordPerfect on an IBM PC. The PC had an astonishing 64K of volatile memory, much larger than the 12K iron core in my PDP 11s. The PC would boot to a BASIC interpreter if there was no 'floppy' in either of the two 5-1/4 drives. This was a MAJOR advance over paper tape, and a bootstrap loader that had to be toggled in with switches, one bit at a time.

'1 2 3' had a feature still missing from Excel today. Our company liked to see salary charts plotted as age vs. annual salary. It later became 'experience' vs. salary as ageism became undesirable. Experience was simply (age - 21). Lotus allowed placing a label anywhere around a data point, above, below, left, right, and more. Excel 97 allowed simply above the point. Excel would make salary charts unreadable for even small departments by over writing names and data points. I would enter the data in Excel, translate it to Lotus, move the labels to make the charts clear, then translate them back to Excel for presentation. I still use Excel (and no longer '1 2 3') for reports and presentations and some analyses. I have run up against size limits for large multichannel time sampled data sets, but simple decimation software fixes that for most report quality charts.

[AppyPappy]

I moved from IT to Finance at a large corporation. My first task was to convert a Lotus 123 system to Excel. I had to learn 123 code and convert it to Excel macros. This was pre-VBA days.

[House Atreides]

I made the move to “All-things-Apple” many years ago. I should say “almost all Apple” as I still use Excel as my spreadsheet software of choice. I’m sure that Apple’s Numbers software is just as good but I know so many Excel “hacks” that I dread the learning curve I’d have to go through to get Numbers to do the same “tricks” I have Excel doing. Oh well, maybe one day.

[zeugma]

I wonder if, after 30 years, Excel is finally capable of dealing with dates that extend across centuries. I have a file on my National Debt webpage that tracks the debt going back to 1791. I am able to produce a fairly horrific chart using LibreOffice, but it hasn't worked correctly in Excel ever since Microsoft 'fixed' their Y2K issues. On the above page is a link to the LibreOffice version, as well as a CSV that Excel should be able to import. Unfortunately, I can no longer test it in Excel.

[Baynative]

I am in search of a good service for sending large files. I tried to use Dropbox and they have non existing customer service, so I want something I can rely on.