Back In Time With Microsoft Excel

A very nice email, from someone who visited the Contextures website, made me think about how long I’ve been using Excel.

My guess was that I’d started around 1987, so I fired up the old Mac laptop, and dug some old floppies out of the storage cupboard.

Excel 3.0 on Mac PowerBook

In the photo below, you can see my Mac PowerBook 170 laptop, from late 1991. It’s running the Mac version of Excel 3.0.

There’s a Mac 128K model in the back room too, but I didn’t have the strength to dig that out. (I hope the producers of the tv series, The Hoarders, don’t call me now.)

Mac PowerBook 170 running Mac Excel 3.0
Mac PowerBook 170 running Mac Excel 3.0

Excel Files

As you can see, the application files were much smaller in Excel 3.0. Of course, that still took a good chunk out of my 40MB hard drive.

Do you remember the days when a Microsoft Office application was just over a megabyte in size?

ExcelMac02

Flashy Excel Charts

Even though the machine didn’t have colour, I was still able to make some pretty flashy 3-D charts in the old days.

I have no idea what this was supposed to show, but maybe it was the results of an Olympic ski jumping event.

ExcelMac03

Black and White Tetris

I’m sure that I never wasted any time playing TETRIS, when I was supposed to be working on Excel files.

And it must have been harder to play back then, when all the Tetris shapes were the same shade of grey!

ExcelMac04

Sorting a List

Way back then (and until Excel 2007), we were only able to sort by 3 levels, and we couldn’t sort by colour.

That didn’t matter much to me, since I didn’t have colour!

Sorting a List in Excel 3.0
Sorting a List in Excel 3.0

My Oldest Excel File

There may be something older on a floppy disk at the back of the storage cupboard, but I finally found an Excel file that I’d worked on in April 1987. I was creating some Excel training files, to be used by Apple vendors.

ExcelMac06

The Excel 3.0 File and Excel Toolbar

Here’s what the file looked like, and it’s interesting to see the minimalist toolbar too. Do you remember what all those icons were for?

Excel 3.0 File and Excel Toolbar
Excel 3.0 File and Excel Toolbar

How Long Have You Used Excel?

There’s an Excel poll on my Debra D blog, so if you have a minute, please go and answer the question – How Long Have You Been Using Excel?

[update: the poll is closed now]

Spreadsheet Demo From May 1987

In an episode of Computer Chronicles from May 1987, the guests talked about spreadsheets.

This video shows an Excel demo, by Mike Slade from Microsoft, using a Macintosh. He shows multiple worksheets open at the same time, links the sheets, creates a chart, and runs a macro.

____________