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September 4, 1995 ----- [Image] Spreadsheet features are sum fun, but the time and space they waste adds up

I think I've become spreadsheet challenged. This may ----- not seem like big news to you, but it is earthshaking for me. Spreadsheets are the reason I [Image] got involved with computers in 1981. I've always prided myself on being the average spreadsheet user and therefore a kind of stand-in for the poor ----- end-user out there. If I've become spreadsheet challenged, then one of two things must have [Image] happened: I've gotten stupider or spreadsheets have gotten too smart. ----- My very first significant contact with computing was with the people who started a company in Cambridge, [Image] Mass., called Software Arts, which had made a program called VisiCalc. I was working for Inc. magazine at the time. I discovered (two years after ----- the program was introduced) that these fellows had produced something called a spreadsheet, which any [Image] business person could use to model and analyze a business problem. So I ran out and got an Apple II (in July 1981, just a month before IBM introduced ----- the PC -- always great timing), which is what VisiCalc ran on. [Image]

I learned that spreadsheets were a really useful tool for normal business people. I wrote articles ----- about spreadsheets and Software Arts and the software industry. I used spreadsheets -- first [Image] VisiCalc, then 1-2-3, then Multiplan for the Macintosh (before Microsoft finally wrote a real spreadsheet for the machine), then Excel. -----

I learned that I was a pretty typical user when it came to using spreadsheets. I wrote business models, did budgets, managed lists, and learned that I would never be able to figure out scripting. Like most normal people, my brain is missing some significant synapse that allows me to think like a computer. So I can't figure out how to program, do scripting, write macros, or anything else that requires absolute logic. Being a typical user, I also discovered that I could analyze what was happening in the computer business pretty well. So spreadsheets led me to where I am today.

That's why spreadsheets are a big deal to me. Last week, though, I needed to use a spreadsheet for the first time in a long time. I had progressed from VisiCalc on the Apple II to 1-2-3 on the PC to Multiplan and then Excel on the Macintosh. (Along the way, I played with Quattro Pro and other spreadsheet products such as Javelin or Twin.) But the honest truth is that I haven't really needed to use a spreadsheet for about seven or eight years -- before even Excel was introduced on Windows. (Most people don't know that Excel started out as a Macintosh program, back when Microsoft actually had to compete to be successful.)

So I got Excel 5.0 up and running, and I was lost. Sure, a lot of the original functions still worked as expected. The first thing the first document I opened asked was whether I wanted to re-establish the links contained in the documents. Because the linked documents didn't come with the file, I said no, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to break the links so it will stop asking me every time I open the file. And I have no idea what data the link was providing.

As I went further into my project, which involved trying to adapt for my needs what someone else had done, I kept encountering both concepts foreign to my simple mind and features or tools that left me clueless. On the Tools menu, Excel lists items called "Goal seek..." and "Solver... ." And on the Data menu, there's something called "PivotTable." I have no clue what these things do or how they could relate to anything I might want. (I do remember in my role as an industry analyst that these features became competitive issues during the Spreadsheet Wars. Indeed, the pivot table feature is something inherited from a NextStep-based spreadsheet called Improv, which Lotus introduced in 1990.)

Admittedly, there is some very cool stuff in this spreadsheet, which I hope someday to enjoy the benefits of. An instantly cool thing is the Auto Sum feature, which automatically sets up a sum formula and guesses which range you want to add up. Then there's Auto Format, which will suggest and implement different fancy formatting for your spreadsheet. Then there's the Scenario manager, another great feature borrowed from Lotus, which developed the idea of using Notes to manage different combinations of assumptions in a business model.

In fact, I wish I had the time I used to have in my analyst days to just sit and play with Excel and discover all these really neat features that are included. But I actually had to get something done on a deadline, and I didn't want to spend the time learning the spreadsheet if I could get away with what I already knew.

Having been an analyst, I know all the reasons that "featuritis" became a competitive issue and a requirement for upgrading from one version to another. I know how Excel beat the heck out of 1-2-3 by working with Windows better and having all the checklist items required. But now that we have $100 software as a norm and that Microsoft has won the application wars and that we're all grown up now and wanting to get our work done, I wonder if the world hasn't changed enough to do it differently. Maybe some really smart entrepreneur could come along and adopt all the neat features from Excel 5.0 but leave out all the hoary ones and create a smaller, faster, more usable product for $100 that would read and write the same file format and be completely compatible with the original one without giving Microsoft an excuse to sue the heck out of them.

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Write to Stewart Alsop at stewart_alsop@infoworld.com

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