In September 1985, Microsoft released the first version of Excel. Forty years later, I had a chance to talk about what went into that first release and what it was like to build the program in its earliest days.

Here is the talk:

Reunion Photos

We also got together for a reunion dinner around the anniversary. A few photos from the evening:

Excel reunion dinner, with an original Macintosh running Excel.

An original Macintosh running Excel, with early Microsoft Excel materials.

Party favor for the reunion dinner: the original Microsoft logo, known as the Blibbet.

Around the same time, I also spoke with Gill Kearsley for the BBC’s Witness History series. It is a short radio piece about Excel’s launch and some of the stories around the spreadsheet world it helped create.

Listen to the BBC Witness History interview

Excel has had a long and strange life: from a small Mac-first project in the mid-1980s to one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world. It is fun to look back at the constraints, decisions, and bits of luck that shaped the first version.