MS Excel resources - 04:33, 2007-Sep-11

Spreadsheets are powerful calculation and analysis tools. They offer a simple means to show a range of scenarios resulting from changing any variable. Spreadsheets hold pieces of data in cells and the values can be linked by various operators.

Excel was originally developed for the Macintosh. The first Windows version was labeled 2 to correspond to the Mac version. BIFF (Binary File Format) is the file format in which Excel documents are saved on disk. A BIFF file is a complete description of an Excel document. BIFF files consist of sequences of variable length records.

Version 1 -  1985 - Macintosh computer.
Version 2 - 1987 - Windows computer.
Version 3 - 1990 - Many more new features (toolbars, 3D charts).
Version 4 - 1992 - Becomes popular.
Version 5 - 1993 - VBA, multiple worksheets added.
Version 7 - 1997 - Excel 95. The first 32-bit version.
Version 8 - 1999 - Excel 97. New VBA interface with user forms and data validation.
Version 9 - 1987 - Excel 2000. HTML as native file format, self-repair, and pivot charts.
Version 10 - 2001 - Excel 2002. Best Excel version thus far but needs product activation.
Version 11 - 2003 - Excel 2003. Some changes.
Version 12 - 2007 - Major changes.

For example, one record type describes a formula entered into a cell, one describes the size and location of a window into a document, another describes a picture format. Every record follows the same format: record type, record length and record data. The latter is the variable length portion of the record containing the actual data.

The maximum length of a record is 2084 bytes. Rows and columns are stored zero-based. Cells that don't have values or formulas in them, have default format attributes, and are not referenced in any other formulas. Undefined cells do not have any memory allocated for them.

Excel Resources