Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application with tools that increase the user's productivity in capturing, analyzing, and sharing tabular data sets. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns (in other words, a table, hence "tabular"). Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values, or formulas. A formula defines how the content of that cell is to be calculated from the contents of any other cell (or combination of cells) each time any cell is updated. A pseudo third dimension to the matrix is sometimes applied as another layer, or layers/sheets, of two-dimensional data.

Spreadsheets developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting worksheets. They boost productivity because of their ability to re-calculate the entire sheet automatically after a change to a single cell is made (which was a manual process in the days of paper ledgers). Spreadsheets have now replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world, with any exceptions being rare, because of the much greater productivity that they make possible, and thus the competitive disadvantage of spreadsheet illiteracy. Although they were first developed for accounting or bookkeeping tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted, and shared.

A modern spreadsheet file consists of multiple worksheets (usually called by the shorter name sheets) that make up one workbook, with each file being one workbook. A cell on one sheet is capable of referencing cells on other, different sheets, whether within the same workbook or even, in some cases, in different workbooks.

Spreadsheets share many principles and traits of databases, but spreadsheets and databases are not the same thing. A spreadsheet is essentially just one table, whereas a database is a collection of many tables with machine-readable semantic relationships between them. Spreadsheets are often imported into databases to become tables within them. While it is true that a workbook that contains three sheets is indeed a file containing multiple tables that can interact with each other, it lacks the relational structure of a database.

A spreadsheet app is one of four or five main component apps of an office productivity suite (such as OpenOffice or Microsoft Office[MSO]). Such suites group a spreadsheet app (such as OpenOffice Calc or Microsoft Office Excel) with a word processor, apresentation program, and a database management system (and, optionally, various other apps) into a solution stack that aids theproductivity of most office work, from administrative to managerial.

Visicalc was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer, and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a success and greatly assisted in their widespread application. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system.Excel now has the largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms.Since the advent of web apps, office suites now also exist in web-app form, with Google Docs and Microsoft Office Web Apps being the biggest competitors in the segment, and thus Google spreadsheets now share the market with Excel. As cloud computing gradually replaces desktop computing, spreadsheet apps continue to be important components for typical end users.