INTHEBLACK February / March 2026 - Magazine - Page 46
P O D C AS T
Celebrating 40 years
of Excel
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“As accountants, we tend to think of Excel as our
application, but it is being used by engineers,
marketers, pretty much everybody.”
NEALE BLACKWOOD CPA, A4 ACCOUNTING
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.”
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
46 INTHEBLACK February/March 2026
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.
LISTEN
to the full
podcast episode
