Microsoft Excel is one of the most popular spreadsheet applications that helps the user to organize data, complete calculations, make decisions, transform data to graph, and develop professional looking reports. Excel is supported by both Mac and PC platforms. Microsoft Excel can also be used to balance a checkbook, create an expense report, build formulas, and edit them.
At its core, Excel is a table consisting of rows and columns. Excel is composed of rows and columns and uses a spreadsheet to display data.
In 1978, Dan Bricklin, a young graduate student at the Harvard School of Business, developed a piece of software called Visicalc which simulated a worksheet. It was the first electronic spreadsheet, a prototype of the many varieties of spreadsheets available today. The Excel spreadsheet is considerably more powerful than Visicalc, able to handle much larger sets of numerical data at greater speeds. Like Visicalc, however, it goes beyond the traditional manual worksheet in so far as it is programmable.
Excel is not database package but has some special database features like sorting, filtering, and data retrieval, which allows users to create and manage list. Hence, Excel is equipped to handle and manipulate small databases. While creating a small database, two points must be noted:
a) The rows of data should be continuous to facilitate the manipulation of data. That is no blank row even a column label and the first record in the database.
b) The names of the columns should be entered in a single cell and must be unique.
What Is Microsoft Excel?
