Blog Post

Excel Blog
3 MIN READ

Excel Turns 40: Join the Celebration!

msexcel's avatar
msexcel
Iron Contributor
Aug 06, 2025

🎉 Forty years of Excel: innovation, community, and celebration 🎉

This year marks a major milestone—Microsoft Excel turns 40! In honor of four decades of innovation, we’re kicking off “40 Days of Excel”, a global community celebration spotlighting the features that made Excel iconic. 

It all started on September 30, 1985, when Excel debuted on the Macintosh, introducing a revolutionary graphical interface for spreadsheets. Since then, Excel has evolved into a productivity powerhouse, empowering people and organizations across the globe.

Starting today, August 6, we’ll count down to Excel’s birthday with 40 days of features—each one introduced by an Excel MVP or Creator. These passionate experts will share what makes each feature special, offer pro tips, and tell personal stories of how Excel has shaped their work and creativity. 

This isn’t just a look back—it’s a 40-day journey through Excel’s evolution, packed with nostalgia, insights, and surprises. We invite you to follow along, learn something new, and share your own Excel memories with us. 

#Excel40

---

Day 1
Let's get started with some favorite keyboard shortcuts—Deb Ashby

 

Day 2
Some favorite number formatting tricks—Leila Gharani

 

Day 3
Save time every single day with Freeze Panes—Grant

 

Day 4
One of the most iconic and enduring features: AutoSum—Bill Jelen aka Mr. Excel

 

Day 5
Some PivotTable tips and tricks—Leila Gharani

 

Day 6
Automate your workflow in seconds with macro recorder—Grant

 

Day 7
VBA and charting—Jon Peltier

 

Day 8
Use Goal Seek to quickly solve for the exact input value needed to reach a desired result—Bill Jelen aka Mr. Excel

 

Day 9
Conditional formatting—John Michaloudis

 

Day 10
Use data validation to help minimize errors in your spreadsheets—Deb Ashby

 

Day 11
Filter by selection—John Michaloudis

 

Day 12
Excel Tables (aka Ctrl-T tables)—by Jon Acampora

 

Day 13
Dynamic charting with Tables—Jon Peltier

 

Day 14
Show trends at a glance with sparklines—Grant

 

Day 15
Reminiscing and reflecting on a favorite feature: Power Query—Oz du Soleil

 

Day 16
Another favorite feature: PowerPivot—Ken Puls

 

Day 17
Filter data using slicers—Aline

 

Day 18
Analyze trends over time using timeline—Sheet Sensei

 

Day 19
Automatically fill your data using Flash Fill when it senses a pattern—Jon Peltier

 

Day 20
AutoSave had me—Leila Gharani

 

Day 21
Instead of tennising emails, just add a threaded comment—Mynda Treacy

 

Day 22
Create your own customized views using Sheet View—Deb Ashby

 

Day 23
See what changes others have made to your workbook using Show Changes—Jon Acampora

 

Day 24
An all time favorite dynamic array function: the FILTER function—Excel Dictionary

 

Day 25
One of Miss Excel's favorite features: XLOOKUP—Miss Excel

 

Day 26
Find UNIQUE values in your data—Aline

 

Day 27
Write your own Excel functions with LET & LAMBDA—Dim

 

Day 28
Dynamic charting with dynamic arrays—Jon Peltier

 

Day 29
One of the coolest Excel features to ever be released: data types—Excel Dictionary

 

Day 30
Automate Excel with Office Scripts—Mark Proctor

 

Day 31
Another Miss Excel's favorite function: GROUPBY—Miss Excel

 

Day 32
All-time favorite text functions: TEXTSPLIT & TEXTJOIN—Excel Dictionary

 

Day 33
One of Miss Excel's favorite hacks: insert pictures into cells—Miss Excel

 

Day 34
Advanced analysis with Python in Excel—Excel Dictionary

 

Day 35
Navigate srpeadsheets with Copilot in Excel — Sheet Sensei

 

Day 36
Think deeper with Copilot in Excel with Python—CheatSheets

 

Day 37
Use Copilot in Excel to clean data—Excel tips for all

 

Day 38
Sentiment analysis using Copilot in Excel—Kevin Stratvert

 

Day 39
Start with Copilot—Piggy Bank Accountant

 

Day 40—Happy Birthday Excel!🎉
COPILOT function—Leila Gharani

 

Updated Sep 30, 2025
Version 38.0

6 Comments

  • I cut my programming teeth on VisiCalc for Apple II’s , in the early 80s.
    Ahh … the memories in those 40+ years …

    First, I wrote a course attendance tracking / course payment application for the adjunct side of the health-care-admin teaching unit of a major university (my professor handed me the VisiCalc software, said “Learn this, and teach it to your class” (which I did)). And later turned this into a job building a floppy-disk sneaker-net internal charge-back app with Lotus 1-2-3 for the OMB of a small city (mid-80s). Which set me on a path doing relational DB work (I didn’t know it was called that at the time, it just seemed … useful to arrange data in categories … which made “lookup” functions in both VisiCalc and Lotus work correctly … especially when using macros to grab data between files (which the software manuals of the day did not describe how to do, and there -was-no-internet- and books … were not there either)). Of course then, I had to make the DataEase DBs export to Excel (alas, MS did not succeed in buying DataEase), and interface with WordStar and maybe WordPad macros … and then I learned how to make nearly everything interface with Oracle (SQL Server didn't have same pizazz for me). And soon, I may retire. We’ll see.