VD is one of the best tools to get a handle on plaintext tabular data straight from the command line. Source: Corel Office 7 / Correl Quattro Pro 7Įssentially the same version of the same spreadsheet product, but sold with different software packages. This seems like it would limit the free-form intention of a spreadsheet, but also keep you from making mistakes. It looks like a spreadsheet that is cell based, but it’s actually based on objects, meaning you have to reference data by name of the object/model. Source: Borland Office 2.0 For Windows 3.1 Source: Ability 1.0Ĭheck out Ability for a free working version! Source: AppleWorks 5.0 The key difference is that columns are named by what they represent rather than a sequential index.

This one is billed as an “analysis and reporting tool” but it looks a lot like a spreadsheet. It contains a word processor, a spelling checker, a data base, a spreadsheet, an outliner, a graphics program, a communications program and a set of desktop utilities - all in one single, consistent application.ĭid you know that Boeing made a spreadsheet product back in the 1980’s? Source: Javelin Plus 1.0 Source: Better Working Eight-in-One for MS-DOSīetter Working Eight-in-One, from Spinnaker Software is an integrated office suite for DOS. I can imagine this would be convenient when it came to adding a section for aggregation calculations. I’ve never used Multiplan, but as far as I can tell, grids have column numbers instead of letters, and you can have multiple grid listed sequentially, each capped at a certain number of rows. Source: Twitter - Anatoly Shashkin - Multiplan for MS DOS The surface area - literally and figuratively - is small. I like the simplicity of Lotus-1-2-3 and other MS-DOS sheets. It probably conforms to the FAST Standard more strictly than many. Source: Wikipedia 1700’s German ledgerĪ german ledge containing financial transactions. What strikes me is that we have been struggling with vertical layouts for a long time.

Let’s start off not entirely at the beginning, but pretty far back. Here we go, roughly in in chronological order. I should mention that a good number of these screenshots came from, which is a great archive of all sorts of old software. What are the common elements that a user sees? What do they have in common beyond the grid? You can find these images with a quick image search, but I wanted examples of each in one place so I can see the general UI patterns.

Openoffice org 3.1 review