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Spreadsheet history

A short history of the spreadsheet

Before software, a spreadsheet was paper: an accountant’s ledger ruled into rows and columns, spread across two facing pages. Then someone asked what would happen if the paper could do the arithmetic itself. Here’s how that grid became one of the most useful programs ever written.

Timeline

This table works like a sheet: filter by era, or sort by year.

Filter
ProgramMade byPlatformWhy it mattered
1961Budget models by computerRichard MattessichMainframeAn accounting professor’s paper “Budgeting Models and System Simulation” outlines the electronic spreadsheet, decades before personal computers.
1969LANPARRene Pardo & Remy LandauTime-sharing mainframesBuilt so a Bell Canada manager could change budgeting forms without a programmer. It calculated formulas in dependency order — “natural order” recalculation.
1979VisiCalcDan Bricklin & Bob FrankstonApple IIThe first spreadsheet for personal computers. Change one number and everything recalculates — people bought Apple IIs just to run it.
1980SuperCalcSorcimCP/MAn early VisiCalc rival, bundled with WordStar on the Osborne 1 portable computer.
1982MultiplanMicrosoftCP/M, MS-DOS, MacMicrosoft’s first spreadsheet and Excel’s ancestor. It used R1C1-style references instead of A1.
1983Lotus 1-2-3Lotus DevelopmentIBM PC (MS-DOS)Spreadsheet, charts and database in one program — hence 1-2-3. Fast and written for the IBM PC, it became the PC’s killer app and ruled the decade.
1985Excel 1.0MicrosoftMacintoshA spreadsheet designed around a graphical interface: fonts, menus and a mouse.
1987Excel 2.0MicrosoftWindowsThe first Windows release. Excel grew with Windows and overtook 1-2-3 in the 1990s.
1989Quattro ProBorlandMS-DOSA strong 1-2-3 challenger. It passed from Borland to Novell to Corel, and is still sold today in WordPerfect Office.
1991Lotus ImprovLotus DevelopmentNeXTSTEPKept formulas apart from the grid and organized data into named categories you could rearrange — an idea that anticipated the pivot table.
1998GnumericGNOME projectLinuxAn open-source spreadsheet whose accuracy earned it a niche in statistics and science. Version 1.0 shipped on the last day of 2001.
2000OpenOffice.orgSun MicrosystemsWindows, Linux, SolarisSun open-sources the StarOffice suite, and its Calc spreadsheet puts a free, full office spreadsheet within everyone’s reach.
2006Google SpreadsheetsGoogleWeb browserA spreadsheet in the browser that several people can edit at once. It later became Google Sheets.
2007Excel 2007MicrosoftWindowsBrings the ribbon and the XML-based .xlsx format (standardized as ECMA-376), and grows the grid to 1,048,576 rows × 16,384 columns.
2007NumbersAppleMac, later iPhone, iPad & iCloudA free-form canvas where several tables, charts and text boxes share one sheet.
2010LibreOffice CalcThe Document FoundationWindows, Mac, LinuxA community fork of OpenOffice.org, free and open source. The original line continues as Apache OpenOffice.
2020Dynamic arraysMicrosoft ExcelWindows, Mac, webOne formula can return a whole range that “spills” into neighbouring cells, with new functions like FILTER, SORT and UNIQUE.
2023Python in ExcelMicrosoftWindows, webPython code runs inside Excel cells, calculated in Microsoft’s cloud.
2026LightCellWriteAMac, WindowsThat’s us: a fast, native editor for the .xlsx, .xls and .csv files you already have, running entirely on your own computer.

19 of 19 records shown

The grid keeps growing

VisiCalc fit its whole world into 63 columns and 254 rows — cells A1 to BK254. Today’s .xlsx sheets hold over a million times more. This sheet is live: change a row or column count, or type a name, rows and columns into row 6 and it joins the chart.

Grid sizes
E5
ABCDEF
1ProgramYearRowsColumnsCellsvs VisiCalc
2VisiCalc19792546316,0021.0×
3Excel 95199516,3842564,194,304262×
4Excel 97199765,53625616,777,2161,048×
5Excel 2007+20071,048,57616,38417,179,869,1841,073,608×
6
1 cell selectedE5: 17,179,869,184, formula =C5*D5
VisiCalc16,002
Excel 954,194,304
Excel 9716,777,216
Excel 2007+17,179,869,184
Cells per sheet, drawn on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times more. The chart reads straight from the sheet above, so edit a number and watch it move.

Three quirks that stuck around

=-2^2 is 4

Excel negates before it raises to a power, so =-2^2 means (−2)² — not −(2²). Try it in the sheet above; it follows the same rule.

February 29, 1900

1900 wasn’t a leap year, but Excel’s date system says it was. The bug was kept on purpose, so dates stayed compatible with Lotus 1-2-3.

R1C1 never left

Multiplan named cells by row and column number. Excel can still show formulas that way — =R[-1]C means “the cell just above.”

Spreadsheets you can use today

From the industry standard to open-source projects you can run on any computer.

SpreadsheetMade byRuns onCost & license
LightCellThat’s us — fast, native, and local.WriteAMac, WindowsFree; one-time upgrade
Microsoft ExcelThe industry standard, and the home of .xlsx.MicrosoftWindows, Mac, web, iOS, AndroidSubscription or one-time purchase; free web version
Apple NumbersCanvas-style sheets with several tables and charts per page.AppleMac, iPhone, iPad, iCloudFree
Google SheetsReal-time collaboration in the browser.GoogleWeb, Android, iOSFree with a Google account
LibreOffice CalcA full office spreadsheet; native OpenDocument (.ods) format.The Document FoundationWindows, Mac, LinuxFree, open source (MPL 2.0)
Apache OpenOffice CalcThe continuation of the original OpenOffice.org.Apache Software FoundationWindows, Mac, LinuxFree, open source (Apache 2.0)
GnumericLightweight, with a reputation for accurate statistics.GNOME projectLinuxFree, open source (GPL)
ONLYOFFICE SheetsAn office suite built around Microsoft’s file formats.Ascensio SystemWeb, Windows, Mac, Linux, mobileFree desktop app; open source (AGPL)
GristA spreadsheet–database hybrid with typed columns.Grist LabsWeb, self-hostedOpen-source core (Apache 2.0); hosted plans
sc-imA Vim-style spreadsheet for the command line.Open-source communityTerminal (Linux, Mac)Free, open source
IronCalcAn open-source spreadsheet engine written in Rust.IronCalc projectWeb; embeddable engineFree, open source

Further reading

History

Formats & references

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