Excel Technology history

Jim Manzi had become CEO at Lotus in April 1986 and in July 1986 Mitch Kapor resigned as Chairman of the Board.

In January of 1987, Lotus Development filed suit against Paperback Software and separately against Mosaic Software claiming they had infinged on the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software.

By 1988, Microsoft Excel was beginning to outsell its main competitor Lotus 1-2-3.

When Windows finally gained wide acceptance with Version 3.0 in late 1989 Excel was Microsoft's flagship product.

In November of 1990, The Microsoft Office was released.

In May 1991 the company raised $3.6 million with an initial public offering on the NASDAQ. Sales in 1991 were about $250,000.

In 1992 the tiny company acquired Quantronix, Inc., a much larger manufacturer of lasers for the scientific and industrial sectors.

According to Russo and Nafziger (1993) "The Court granted Lotus' motion dismissing the Software Arts' action and confirming that Lotus had acquired all rights, including all claims, as part of the earlier transaction."

In the summer of 1994, Excel/Quantronix introduced a laser welding system that could be used for the repair of dental crowns and bridges.

In October 1995 Excel paid $3.5 million for the Photo Research Division of Kollmorgen, which was rolled into the newly created subsidiary Photo Research Inc.

They accounted for 7 percent of sales in 1996 but were not a significant part of the company's operations by the end of the decade.

In 1997, Microsoft introduced versions of Excel that featured the paperclip office assistant, validations, and a new interface for VBA developers.

Eventually, competing firms developed similar products, but Synrad still had a strong market share when Excel bought it in 1998 for $22 million.

Claymon, D. "Profile: Mitch Kapor, The Lotus cofounder goes to bat for startups", Red Herring Magazine, February 1999, URL www.herring.com/mag/issue63/news-profile.html.

Later, with Excell 2000, Microsoft introduced an improved clipboard, capable of holding multiple items at one time, and introduced the Excel Self-Repair.

2001: Control Systemation, Inc. is created.

Because Baublys had products similar to Excel's Orlando-based subsidiary Control Laser, the two companies consolidated their activities at the start of 2002, although they remained legally separate.

In October 2003, Dan Bricklin is working at Interland, Inc. at interland.com and he is maintaining an interesting Web Site at URL www.bricklin.com.

Power, D. J., "A Brief History of Spreadsheets", DSSResources.COM, World Wide Web,http://dssresources.com/history/sshistory.html, version 3.6, 08/30/2004.

Although MS Excel is a leader in the field of spreadsheet applications, in 2006, Google Sheets emerged and became its main rival.

Excel 2007 featured a redesigned user interface, sharing features with the Microsoft products Word and PowerPoint and allowing users to move smoothly between these applications.

Excel 2008 for Mac (2008)Source: sourceforge.net

Excel 2010 Splash Page (2010)Source: sourceforge.net

Excel 2011 for Mac (2011)Source: sourceforge.net

The unexpected death of Roy Flowers in 2014 brought about an unplanned reorganization and the addition of Debra Yamanaka, a long-time friend and former colleague of all three founders.

According to a Gartner study in 2015, more than half of IT leaders said they “mostly” or “completely” opt for spreadsheets when performing analysis.

Compare the $13.8B that MS Office raked in over 2016 relative to GSuite’s $1.3B, and you get a sense of the sustained market dominance.

CLIMB Professional Development and Training (2017) Why Excel is an indispensable business tool.

In Excel, users can place the most frequently used features on the toolbar to get quick access to them (VanSomeren, 2018). They also may create their own key shortcuts, as in the case with macros.

Goodwill Community Foundation (2019) How to use Excel’s VLOOKUP function.