Are you taking the day off, to celebrate Microsoft Excel’s 40th birthday? Or will you have a big party with your co-workers, at the office or remotely?
And what were you doing on September 30, 1985, when the first version of Excel was released, for the Macintosh?
40 Days of Celebrating
Leading up to today’s birthday party for Excel, Microsoft’s Excel team had a 40-day-long Excel-ebration, starting on August 6th.
At that link, you can see each of the daily videos, created by Excel MVP and Excel creators, who enthusiastically shared their Excel tips.
There are old features, that we still depend on, and new features that we’re just getting started with!
Excel Memories
In 2015, for Excel’s 30th birthday, I asked people to share their early memories of working with Excel.
There were lots of wonderful responses, and you can read them all in my Happy 30th Anniversary Excel post.
See if any of the stories are close to what you remember!
- Maybe you started with Excel on the Mac Plus, like I did, and Alberto Almoguera did too. Those 9” black and white screens were awesome!
- Do you remember installing Excel from floppy disks?
- Was Excel your first spreadsheet program, or did you migrate from something else, like VisiCalc, or Lotus 1-2-3? Or did you start with Multiplan, like I did?
- Were your first Excel projects for work, or personal tasks?
There are a few more stories of getting started in Excel, in the comments in this “How Long Have You Been Using Excel” article, on my Debra D’s blog.
And you can see some of my early Excel files in my blog post Back in Time with Microsoft Excel.
Do you remember the days when a Microsoft Office application was just over a megabyte in size?
Excel Team Memories
For some behind-the-scenes memories, take a look at GeekWire’s interview with 4 original members of Microsoft’s Excel team — Mike Koss, Jabe Blumenthal, Doug Klunder and Jon DeVaan.
You’ll learn what they almost called Excel, and why Excel’s motto is “Recalc or Die”.
More Microsoft News in 1985
Lots of other things were going on at Microsoft in 1985, and you can see the highlights in this History of Microsoft 1985 summary.
There’s a 10-minute video at the top, with the Excel release at the 1:48 mark. Below the video, there’s a written list of the year’s highlights
This Canadian tidbit was my favourite non-Excel news:
- May 3, 1985: Rich MacIntosh, General Manager of Microsoft Canada, Inc., was recently called to the Canadian Department of Agriculture to retrieve his Microsoft “Mouse” after four weeks of quarantine
Excel’s 40 Best Features
What are your favourite features in Excel? Or is it impossible to choose?
In honour of Excel’s 40th birthday, Bill Jelen (Mr Excel) published a new book:
- Excel at 40: The 40 Best Features in Microsoft Excel as of September 2025
Here’s what you’ll find in the book:
- Step-by-step tips for mastering Excel’s most powerful functions
- Real-life stories from Excel fans and insiders
- Excel jokes and puzzles to test your spreadsheet wit
- A unique mix of nostalgia and forward-thinking tools
You can visit the Mr Excel bookstore (Holy Macro Books), to buy a digital copy of this book.
And there are lots of other helpful Excel books there too!
What Were You Doing On September 30, 1985?
Next, let’s think back to the day that Excel was released – Monday, September 30, 1985.
If you weren’t born yet, you can skip this section!
- Were you a young kid?
- A student learning about computers
- Working at a job, with or without computers?
We got a Macintosh in 1984, and I was self employed, using that Mac. No Excel till a few years later though.
On Television in 1985
After work or school, back in 1985, did you watch television in the evening?
Here were the 8:00 PM shows, in the USA, on September 30, 1985.
Do you remember any of them?
And if you were allowed to stay up a bit later, here are the shows from 9:00 to 11:00 PM that night.
It was a rare event to see Johnny Carson so early in the evening. His show was usually at 11:30 PM, after the nightly news.
And they sure had a lot of shows with an ampersand (&) in the title!
Where Were You in 2005?
And finally, have you celebrated other Excel birthdays/anniversaries?
In 2005, Microsoft had a 20th Excel anniversary celebration.
I wasn’t invited to that official party, but I was at a different Microsoft event that night, during an MVP Summit in Seattle!
The poster below is my souvenir from that party.
It was at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, and we formed a band – Excelerongs – for a special one-night appearance.
- That’s Dick Kusleika at the far left, and I’m 3rd from the right, in the red jacket.
- Other band members were from the Excel team, and I’m sure they’d like to remain anonymous!
So take time to celebrate Excel today, with song, or interpretive dance, or whatever makes you happy!
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Happy 40th Birthday Excel September 30 2025
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On September 30, 1985, I was 14 years old and in my 2nd year of Secondary School (roughly equivalent to 9th grade in US schools), so I didn’t know anything about Excel or spreadsheets.
I grew up in the west of Ireland, and we had only 2 Irish TV channels at that time, but we could also watch the 4 UK TV channels on cable. The highlights for me that evening would have been “Hart to Hart” from 8:00PM – 9:00PM on RTÉ One (an Irish channel), but also “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4” from 8:00PM – 9:00PM on UTV (a UK channel). As we did not have a VCR, I’d have had to choose! I hope Adrian Mole won, but I’m not sure.
Other highlights that night were “The Monday Movie: Eric” (A 1975 Hallmark Movie, with the tagline “The disease: incurable. The odds: insurmountable. But Eric will not surrender! An unforgettable true drama of a young man’s fight for hope, for love, for life.”), or “Cabo Blanco” starring Charles Bronson (from 1980, tagline “An epic adventure that explodes at the edge of the world. Where legends are born. He’s the only man strong enough to hold the secrets of “CABOBLANCO”.”) or we could watch the snooker for over two hours.
We definitely would have had to switch to the News at 9:00PM on RTÉ One, whatever else we were watching, because my dad would always watch that, no arguements allowed.
All 6 of the channels ended transmission every night, sometime between 11:15PM and 12:45AM, so no late night TV watching allowed.
Thanks, Dermot, and I loved hearing about your day, back in 1985!
Our Canadian TV choices were limited too, and there was only one TV in the house, so we watched what Dad picked. Before cable, we could pick up some USA channels, and lots more once cable was added.
And really, Charles Bronson should have stepped in to help poor Eric, with his battle against that disease!
On September 1985 I celebrated my 21st day of employment. We didn’t have a computer in our department yet that year, it appeared a year os so later, in my manager’s office. Featuring Lotus 123. It took a couple of years before I got one in my own office, with Lotus 123 on it.
In the years after that, several other spreadsheet programs crossed my path: Quattro Pro, 20/20 and then somewhere around 1995, Excel was shoe-horned into the office. The rest is history!
Thanks, Jan Karel, and I’m glad you made your way to Excel. Your add-ins and tutorials have helped countless people, over many years!
On September 30, 1985, I completed my nine-month training as a firmware engineer, working alongside top engineers at Telefónica in Madrid, the capital of Spain. The next day, I was part of the two-person team that would design the first generation of digital public telephones, which would replace analog phones. I spent 23 years in the telecommunications industry, as an engineer in the R&D department, until the Siemens factory in Zaragoza closed in 2008.
In 2010, I seriously began learning MS Excel, using Excel 2003 as my first version. Within a few months, I was already using Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. And I liked it so much that I started writing post on my blog about Excel.
In 2011, I returned to Madrid to work as a data engineer for several multinational companies. They hired me thanks to my experience in Excel, which allowed me to retire in 2020.
Now I’m using Excel for the Web, with which I want to demonstrate the full power of Excel files inserted into web pages and blogs like mine. Find my blog in any web browser, with the tag #ExcelPedroWave
Happy 40th anniversary to everyone who uses Excel!!!
Thanks, Pedro, and you’ve had an impressive career, or two careers!
What a fun coincidence that your first training period ended on the day that Excel launched, and Excel became your second career.
Also, thanks for sharing your blog link, and I’m glad it’s got built-in translation options.
I hop you continue to enjoy using Excel for the Web, and keep sharing what you learn!