Multiplan

Microsoft Multiplan was a spreadsheet program from Microsoft.

History

Multiplan was released in 1982, initially for CP / M and DOS MS-DOS/PC, later also for the operating system of the Apple II and the Apple Macintosh. There was even a version for the Commodore 64

The biggest competitor was Lotus 1-2-3, which dominated the market for IBM PCs and compatible computers to because it indicated calculation results faster and could represent results graphically.

Microsoft Excel can be seen as the successor of Microsoft Multiplan. It supported on all platforms the mouse as an input device for multi- plan that was given only on some platforms such as the Macintosh. After the release of Windows 2:03 and about a year after the Apple Macintosh Multiplan was not developed any further.

Microsoft Multiplan had lesser success in the U.S. and did not come via the 15- percent threshold in market share. But by the rapid translation of Multiplan into German, the program was in German-speaking with a market share of 50 percent a success. In 1990, was the development of multi- plan set with the release of the latest version 4.2, because Microsoft had already established since 1987 Excel parallel on the market.

With the Microsoft Chart program Multiplan documents could be displayed graphically.

Row and column name

In contrast to the very first spreadsheet program, VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3 later, in which the lines were designated with numbers and columns with letters, they were identified at Multiplan by another system. The rows and columns were in the system L1C1 ( Line 1, Column 1), L2C2 referred, etc., to German as R1C1. The cell in the third row and the 15th column was then, for example, the coordinate Z3S15. For Lotus and other spreadsheet programs that cell O3 would be called.