Are you ready? Spreadsheet Day 2021 is almost here – Sunday, October 17, 2021. What plans do you have for this year’s celebrations?
Since Spreadsheet Day falls on the weekend this year, you can have a 2-day party! And you won’t be distracted by your co-workers talking about PowerPoint or Word. Just focus on celebrating spreadsheets, all weekend long.
Spreadsheet Day Beginnings
Spreadsheet Day began in 2010, and this is the 12th year that we’ll be celebrating. Go to my Spreadsheet Day Blog, and you can read the details about how I started Spreadsheet Day, on the About page.
VisiCalc Release Date
Why is Spreadsheet Day celebrated on October 17th? That was the date, in 1979, when VisiCalc was first released. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet for personal computers, and you can read more about VisiCalc in the History section on the Spreadsheet Day Blog.
If you haven’t seen it already, you might like this VisiCalc demo by Dan Bricklin, using an Apple II emulator. He talks about the design decisions they made, when building VisiCalc, as he goes through the demo.
The VisiCalc demo was a presentation for the Spring 2019 class in Interaction Techniques class, in the Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science program. You can watch the video at this link, on the Carnegie Mellon site:
Excel Functions
While you wait patiently for Spreadsheet Day to arrive, you can see if your favourite Excel functions are in this list, compiled by Martin K, on the Planning Skills site.
Martin asked 29 Excel bloggers (including me), to send him the names of their favourite Excel functions.
I was surprised to see the function at the top of the list! It was mentioned by 22 of the 29 Excel bloggers, and 9 people had it at the top of their list.
Let me know your guesses about the function list:
- Which function do you think got the most votes?
- Which function has dropped in popularity?
- Which of Excel newer functions is the highest ranking in the list?
- How many of the newer functions are in the Top 11?
Celebrate Spreadsheet Day
Before you stop working this week, remember to remind all your friends, co-workers, and family members that Spreadsheet Day is on Sunday, October 17th.
Have a “grid” celebration on Sunday!
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Get Ready for Spreadsheet Day 2021
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