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At a glance
Microsoft Excel has turned 40, and in this special episode of the INTHEBLACK podcast, resident expert Neale Blackwood CPA reflects on four decades of one of the world’s most enduring business applications.
For accountants, CFOs and finance professionals, Excel is far more than just a spreadsheet — it is the infrastructure of modern decision-making. Blackwood, who first encountered Excel on an Apple Mac in the late 1980s, recalls its early appeal over existing spreadsheet applications.
“It did the same things,” he says, “but it looked a whole lot better.”
The windows advantage
Excel’s graphical interface was revolutionary compared to its text-heavy competitor at the time, Lotus.
However, the strategy that helped secure its dominance was Microsoft’s move to bundle Excel within the Office suite, alongside Word and PowerPoint, creating a comprehensive package.
“The reason Excel took over was that it was on Windows and Lotus wasn’t,” Blackwood says. “You had to go out to a separate window and run the old DOS programs to access Lotus, which was clunky. That is why Excel took off.”
"As accountants, we tend to think of Excel as our application, but it is being used by engineers, marketers, pretty much everybody."
Game-changing features like PivotTables, Visual Basic for Applications (the major programming language at the time), and vastly expanded row and column limits eventually made Excel indispensable.
The ribbon interface, once divisive, made features more accessible and proved visionary as larger monitors became the norm. Excel’s ubiquity and influence now spans industries far beyond finance.
“There is an estimate that there are over a billion Excel users globally,” Blackwood notes. “It goes across platforms and industries — it goes across everything. So that is a big advantage.”
Flexible and adaptable
Blackwood attributes Excel’s longevity to its flexibility. “If something can’t be done with the built-in tools of Excel, you can probably write some macro code that will do it,” he says.
Looking ahead, Blackwood expects Excel to evolve gradually due to backward compatibility needs. AI tools like Copilot may enable quick analysis without heavy skill demands, while Python integration adds powerful data handling that was previously difficult in Excel.
He advises new accountants to prioritise Excel skills while also learning Power BI and Python for advanced tasks. “Excel is still a must-have skill.”
So, is this the most important application ever made? Blackwood thinks so.
“I don’t think companies would survive very well if Excel was magically turned off... As accountants, we tend to think of Excel as our application, but it is being used by engineers, marketers, pretty much everybody.”
As Excel celebrates its 40th — fittingly, XL in Roman numerals — its legacy is clear. Excel is not just software. It is the engine room of business.
