Excel is an application published by Microsoft that is part of the Microsoft Suite. Excel is a spreadsheet application which is designed to handle large amounts of numbers and calculations.
What separates a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel from a word processor like Microsoft Word, is both its structure and built in features. Instead of having one blank page to write content down onto like you have with Word, Excel is split up into a grid of cells, sorted into columns and rows.
By storing numbers, text, or formulas in each cell, the column and row structure makes it simple to organize your data in a way that makes it easy to visualize and easy to work with.
What can you do with Excel?
As with any spreadsheet application, Excel is primarily used to organize data in a way that makes it easy to sort, visualize, and analyze numerical data.
What pushes Excel and other spreadsheet applications past just arranging data, is the ability to perform an almost unlimited amount of mathematical and logical operations on your existing data.
Think of a calculator, to just add two numbers together, you have to punch in a number, hit the plus sign, then punch in another number. It might work when you're adding up just a few numbers, but when you're dealing with anything larger, you need a way to do this faster and more accurately. In just a couple clicks, you could add, subtract, multiply, divide, or perform any number of operations on hundreds of thousands of numbers in a couple clicks.
Chances are, if you've worked in an office setting before, you've used Excel. Here are some of the most common Uses of Excel in a business setting:
1. Accounting and Budgeting
2. Data Analysis
3. Forecasting
4. Visualizing Data
5. Integration with Other Applications
What came before Excel?
There have been many different spreadsheet applications over the years, but none have dominated so completely like Excel.
The very first spreadsheet for personal computers was Visicalc for the Apple II computer. Looking at screenshots of the application, you can see the basic column/row based cell layout, but that is really where the similarities end. I can't even imagine working on something like this, but I'm glad it existed for other programs to build off of.
The Visicalc application:
Are there any alternatives to Excel?
The most prominent alternative to Excel is Google Sheets, a fully online based spreadsheet program that has most of Excel's built in features, and offers a few unique features of its own. Google sheets has some great collaborative features that makes it extremely easy to keep workbooks up to date when sharing with lots of people.
A Few Other Alternatives:
LibreOffice (Calc) - A free spreadsheet application that has more compatibility options than Excel. Supports all sorts of different programming languages to run macros, unlike Excel which relies entirely on VBA.
Numbers - All Mac products come with Numbers preinstalled, a good free option for any Mac user in need of a spreadsheet program
OpenOffice - An open source office suite in the same vein as Microsoft Suite, that offers easy to use, free spreadsheet functions
The LibreOffice Calc application:
What does the future hold for Excel?
Excel will never really stop being worked with and worked on. The most current version of Excel is Excel 365. This move away from distinct releases like "Excel 2003" or "Excel 2017" means that features are added in automatically over time. Every few months, an update is introduced that adds in a little bit more functionality or improves on a feature that's already built in. There's always something to look forward to.
The biggest change that is currently being tested is a new feature called Lambda. This feature will honestly change the way people create spreadsheets and effect the way people using those spreadsheets can interact with them. It has basically created a programming language that can be used inside Excel, allowing anyone to create literally anything. Instead of being restricted to the built in Excel functions like =SUM( ), =AVERAGE( ), =XLOOKUP( ), etc., Lambda allows you to create any function that you can think of.