On Sunday, I'll have been using Excel for 30 years. If anyone has been using Excel for longer please reply! Well reply anyway!

yabi100 said:

Really strange. How could it be possible to answer to Excel questions without using it? Would be very happy to hear more about your experince with Excel.

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Sorry about the delay in responding, but I have not been a regular visitor here of late. I'm not sure what "experience with Excel" you might be referring to. As I said in my post, I taught myself the underlying object model to Excel so that I could create VBA code people's questions. Once I had a full grasp of Excel's formula world, I started posting answers to questions where a formula answer was applicable or requested. As maybe a further background, I am highly technical-oriented (excelled in math and science, did terrible in humanities related subjects), so the Excel world was sort of easy for me to grasp.

I used knock off spreadsheet apps back in college in 1987. Lotus 123 for a few years after. Quattro Pro was my favorite until 1998 when I had to change to Excel kicking and screaming.

So, all said and done, 36 years in spreadsheets and 25 years in Excel.

It must have been somewhere in the early 90's when I first encountered Excel 4 on a Compaq 386s (@Johnny C : indeed, good stuff)
After some trial and error, I discovered the Excel 4 macro sheets, and oh boy, it was a whole new world for me
Suddenly, I could automate many tasks in my job... I spent hours programming, but saved a multitude of hours.

My Excel knowledge took a big leap when I discovered the MrExcel website, a site with so many questions and even more responses.
(On October 13, 2004, the site reached the milestone of 100,000 questions.)

My motto: if you have to perform a task for the 5th time, start thinking in the direction of VBA.
In short, in my case, about 30 years of Excel experience.

I discovered excel\vba when I bought my first pc (which came with office installed in it) around the time MrExcel was launched. It was love at first sight and my curiosity and attachement to excel\vba grew even further when I joined MrExcel and saw the ever unfolding questions and problems to be solved. Unlike some other office apps, I think, excel's simple layout, compact design and versatile features (more so with vba) is the reason for its greater popularity and makes it ideal for the impatient coder who wants to quickly reap and taste the fruit of their mental effort.

Like some others here, although I have been using excel\vba for over 20 years, I have no IT background whatsoever. I don't even use excel in the workplace. I just enjoy playing with coding at home to stay focused and entertained