Datasheet

Suppose that you use Excel 2007 and you give a co-worker (who uses Excel 2000) a copy

of a workbook. If you happened to use a feature that was introduced in Excel 2002, Excel

2003, or Excel 2007, your co-worker may not be able to work with your file in the way you

intended. In fact, if you saved the file in one of the new Excel 2007 file formats, she may

not even be able to open the file.

NOTE

Microsoft provides the free add-on Office 2007 Compatibility Pack. This download gives

previous versions of Office support for the new Office 2007 file formats. Therefore, you

can share Excel 2007 files with users of Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003. Note,

however, that this add-on doesn’t endow the older versions with any new features. It just

allows the software to open and save the files.

For the record, the following table shows the major version numbers of Excel.

Version Released Comments

1 1985 The first version of Excel was for the Apple Macintosh.

2 1987 The first Windows version was labeled 2 to correspond to the

Macintosh version. Because Windows was not widely used, this

version included a runtime version of Windows.

3 1990 This version included toolbars, drawing capabilities, outlining, add-

in support, 3D charts, and many more new features.

4 1992 The first “popular” version of Excel. It included quite a few usability

features.

5 1993 Excel 5, a major upgrade, included multisheet workbooks and

support for VBA.

7* 1995 This version, known as Excel 95, was the first major 32-bit version of

Excel. Feature-wise, it was similar to Excel 5.

8 1997 This version, known as Excel 97, was the first version to support

conditional formatting and data validation. It also incorporated new

menus and toolbars. VBA programmers found quite a few

enhancements, including a completely new VBA editor, UserForms,

class modules, and more.

9 1999 This version, known as Excel 2000, could use HTML as a native file

format and (for the first time) supported COM add-ins. It also

featured a self-repair capability, an enhanced Clipboard, and pivot

charts. VBA programmers could use modeless UserForms, and

several new VBA functions were introduced.

Tip 1: Understanding Excel Versions

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