Excel at 40 Week 1: Days 1–3
OlufemiO looks back on four decades of Excel, sharing technical lessons and practical tips from its early days through modern analytics and data integration with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI.
Excel at 40 Week 1: Days 1–3
Overview
Explore the evolution and impact of Microsoft Excel over forty years. This first installment of a 40-day series details the transformation of Excel from its origins on the Macintosh in 1985 through integrations with Microsoft Fabric and Power BI, focusing on analytics, financial modeling, and auditing.
Highlights
- Timeline of Excel: Tracks key milestones from 1985 to 2025, including advancements such as macros, Power Query, and Python integration.
- Tips and Formulas: Shows how to highlight event dates in Excel automatically for 3/6 months past using conditional formatting:
- For 3 months:
=AND(ISNUMBER($A2), $A2 < TODAY() - 90) - For 6 months:
=AND(ISNUMBER($A2), $A2 < EDATE(TODAY(), -6))
- For 3 months:
- Practical Use Cases: Real-world examples connect Excel to Power BI and Microsoft Fabric, emphasizing its continued importance in analytics and finance.
- Scalability: Illustrates Excel’s growth from 4 million to over 17 billion cells and its shift to a programmable, AI-enabled canvas.
- Industry Insights: Satya Nadella remarks on Excel’s formula language and its Turing-completeness, likening Excel’s Python integration to GitHub Copilot (feature reference).
References
- Excel Tip: Conditional Formatting Example
- Satya Nadella on Excel’s Programming advancements
- Excel with Python, innovation parallels
- Official Excel version compatibility guide
Next Steps
- Follow the 40-day series for weekly new lessons on technical advancements, formula mastery, and modern analytics.
This post appeared first on “Microsoft Tech Community”. Read the entire article here