Microsoft also encouraged the use of the letters XL as shorthand for the program while this is no longer common, the program's icon on Windows still consists of a stylized combination of the two letters, and the file extension of the default Excel format is. However, over time this practice has been ignored, and Microsoft cleared up the issue permanently when they purchased the trademark of the other program. As the result of the dispute Microsoft was required to refer to the program as 'Microsoft Excel' in all of its formal press releases and legal documents. Microsoft Excel 2.1 included a runtime version of Windows 2.1Įarly in its life Excel became the target of a trademark lawsuit by another company already selling a software package named 'Excel' in the finance industry. Microsoft pushed its advantage with regular new releases, every two years or so. This accomplishment, dethroning the king of the software world, solidified Microsoft as a valid competitor and showed its future of developing GUI software. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows and by the early 1990s, Excel had started to outsell 1-2-3 and helped Microsoft achieve the position of leading PC software developer. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 (to synchronize with Macintosh version 2.2) on November 19, 1987. Microsoft originally marketed a spreadsheet program called Multiplan in 1982, which was very popular on CP/M systems, but on MS-DOS systems it lost popularity to Lotus 1-2-3. 3.2 Exporting and Migration of spreadsheets.3.1 Microsoft Excel 2007 Office Open XML formats.

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