Microsoft Excel Version Survey – 2009
Posted by admin in Excel, Excel 2007, Office 2007 on January 25, 2010
For the past few years I’ve been running surveys to see what version of Microsoft Excel people are running (and by extension, which version of Office). Before getting to the latest data, the standard disclaimer applies – this polling data is not scientific. The sample sizes are decent but the user base is skewed. The data is collected from FlowBreeze trial users, which tend to be business-oriented users, and of those, only a small percentage are polled. Also, FlowBreeze runs on Excel 2000 through 2007 on Windows only. So Mac users and Office 97 hold-outs are not represented, nor are users of Open Office and online spreadsheets.
So with that out of the way, let’s get to the data. The graph below of the last six months of 2009 shows that Excel 2007 makes up half the user base. The other half are holding out because they hate the ribbon. (Ha ha, just kidding!)
Excel Version Survey - 2nd half 2009
What’s striking about the most recent trend is the drop off of Excel 2000 and 2002 (XP). In the last two years, they fell from a combined 20% of users to less than 5% , and a big portion of that drop off was in the last six months. On the eve of Excel 2007’s release, Martin Green did a survey that showed Excel 2003 with just over 50% of the market, with Excel 2000 and XP making up most of the remainder. The early 2008 data points below show that Excel 2003 held the same market share after Excel 2007’s release, indicating that XL 2007 adopters had leapfrogged versions.
Excel Version Trend 2008-2009
If history is a guide, after Excel 2010 is released a small portion of adopters will be Excel 2000 and XP users upgrading older PC’s, another small portion will be Excel 2007 users who like to stay on the cutting edge, but the majority should be Excel 2003 users leapfrogging versions. I say “should” because it’s hard to make a prediction. On one hand, Excel 2003 is still a great piece of software, it doesn’t look dated, and a lot of people do not like the ribbon. On the other hand, users of older versions will face increasing pressure to be able to read the new file formats (esp. those w/o the Office 2007 compatibility pack). I would not be surprised if Excel 2010 had a slow adoption rate, but it will be interesting to see.
Reach Hip Office Workers at their Desks
If you’re anything like me, you were sitting around yesterday with a few billion dollars in your pocket wondering where you could spend it. Well have no fear, because the good folks over at Blogads are happy to help. For just under $32 billion (with a ‘b’) you can do a 3 month ad run targeting hip youngsters.
Who are these hip youngsters? See for yourself below. Apparently, people who sit at desks wasting office hours looking at wacky pictures with funny captions are not only hip, but they’re a hot advertising commodity as well.
[Original link: http://web.blogads.com/adspotgroups/mininetwork.2008-05-08.3245856652/ba_mininetwork_view. I'm sure it's subject to change, though]
Ironically, one of the sites is FAIL Blog. I suppose I could submit this there, but that would be recursive.
Updated Flowchart Symbols Overview
The Flowchart Symbols overview has been updated. The symbol descriptions are now color coded, updated, and grouped by type. Click here to read the full article.
The Kayne West Award Show Flowchart
Kayne West Awards Flowchart
Microsoft Excel User Data – 2009
Just a quick update to the earlier data on Microsoft Excel / Office user data (see Office Market Share by Version – 2008 Data for reference). For the first six months of 2009, the survey has collected 594 more data points (for a half-year total of 898), with the breakdown as follows:
- Excel 2000: 4.7%
- Excel 2002: 10.6%
- Excel 2003: 46.0%
- Excel 2007: 38.8%
And, for those of you who prefer visual data, here is the graph:
Commentary
The most stable group of users over the last year and a half has been the Excel XP (2002) users. The recent data indicates that Excel 2007 is cannibalizing market share from Excel 2003 and Excel 2000.
How To Lie With Graphs
If I have one pet peeve about newspapers, it’s how they represent data. So let’s do a pop quiz. Which graph in the image below shows the worse looking trend?
The truth is, they are three representations of the same trend.
Graph A is the most realistic. The Y-axis scale goes from 0 to 480 and the aperture is roughly square.
Graph B distorts the data to look worse than it really is by using a Y-axis scale from 340 to 480. This is a common trick that was used by tobacco companies to show the nicotine levels in their cigarettes versus competitors. Their cigarettes weren’t really much better than the competitors. They just made sure to have the Y-axis cross the X-axis at a point just below their nicotine level, giving the appearance that it was close to nothing.
Graph C has the opposite effect of Graph B. It distorts the data to make the trend look better than it really is. By elongating the X-axis, the downward slope isn’t as steep.
Of course, the Oregonian published one similar to Graph B this morning, showing the last 13 months of factory orders, per U.S. Census Bureau data. Every time I see a graph like that, I think the reading public is getting bamboozled. The data is accurate, but it’s been sensationalized. (And don’t get me started on the one-data-point trends they see in school test scores.)
Microsoft Office Market Share by Version – 2008 Data
[Note: new data added under Updates section below.]
I’ve decided to share some Excel user survey data in hopes that others find it useful. Trying to find data for the market share of the various versions of Microsoft Office products is hard. Microsoft doesn’t publish it, and the only references I find online are typically in articles about the just-around-the-corner ascendancy of open source alternatives. So I decided to run my own survey. For the past year, a random sample of FlowBreeze users has been polled to determine which version of Microsoft Excel they are using. What the data is:
- Microsoft Excel versions 2000, 2002 (XP), 2003, and 2007.
- FlowBreeze trial users.
- Windows only.
- Can be extrapolated to Microsoft Office versions, since Excel is typically sold as part of the Office suite.
- Represents primarily business users.
What the data isn’t:
- A survey of Microsoft Office vs. other office suits such as OOo or Google Docs. (FlowBreeze is an Excel add-in.)
- It does not include Microsoft Office Sharepoint.
- It does not include Mac Office. (FlowBreeze is Windows only.)
- It is not scientific.
(See notes after the graphs.)
Microsoft Office Version Stats - Graph 1
The graph below is the same data as above but in a stacked column.
Microsoft Office Version Stats - Graph 2
I didn’t create a raw data tabulation for publishing, but the following table shows the monthly percentages by version. (The total sample count is 1373 users.)
Microsoft Office Versions - % Data Table
Notes
- Total sample count: 1373.
- It is impossible to say whether the early trending is due to the migration toward Office 2007 or the non-scientific data gathering method.
- The adoption of Excel 2007 seems to have leveled off. One interpretation of this could be that business users that migrate, tend to migrate early.
Conclusions
The most salient point to me as an Office developer is seen in Graph 2. The user share for Excel 2000 is still roughly 10%. The world of Office development has been moving toward .NET (C# or VB.NET) for some time, but Managed COM Add-ins for Excel 2000 are not officially supported by Microsoft. Even developing Managed COM Add-ins that support Excel 2002 forward can be problematic, raising the hurdle to 20% of the Excel market.
Martin Green did a survey in 2006, showing the market share for Excel 2000, 2002, and 2003 to be 18%, 21%, and 54% respectively. His survey included pre-2000 versions as well as Office Mac, so the numbers don’t correlate exactly. But taking those figures as a rough benchmark versus the data above, it suggests that Office 2007 users leapfrogged from previous versions of Excel more than from Excel 2003.
Updates
This section will contain monthly updates to the data, as time permits.
January 2009 – sample size = 147
- Excel 2000: 4%
- Excel 2002: 11%
- Excel 2003: 54%
- Excel 2007: 31%
February 2009 – sample size = 157
- Excel 2000: 4%
- Excel 2002: 15%
- Excel 2003: 42%
- Excel 2007: 39%
Do Lean and Six Sigma Apply to Software?
Neil Davidson has an interesting post questioning the logic of trimming the fat in economic downturns. His isn’t the first blog post I’ve seen recently on the applicability of Lean to software development. As someone with an Industrial / Manufacturing Engineering background who now does programming, I bristle when I see production line concepts applied to software development, so I thought I would chime in on the topic.
There has been a push in recent years (mostly by consultants) to extend concepts from Lean and Six Sigma to service-based industries, but for the most part it doesn’t make sense. Production is deterministic. Work orders are scheduled, raw materials are pulled from stock and production workers have a standardized set of instructions for manufacturing a sub-component or finished good.
The typical work flow for a knowledge worker is not deterministic. You can’t pull a programmer’s brain from stock, run it through a 1-ton arbor press, and squeeze out code to fill an empty software kanban. And even in manufacturing there is a difference between high-volume, low-mix assembly and low-volume, high-mix assembly. Many of the techniques used in Lean, such as value stream mapping, don’t apply well to low-volume, high-mix production, let alone to non-manufacturing.
Another problem is the misuse of ‘Lean’, ‘Six Sigma’, and the combined ‘Lean Six Sigma’.
Lean is an offshoot of the Toyota Production System, created by Taiichi Ohno. He boiled it down to shortening the time between getting an order and getting cash by eliminating the seven common causes of waste in the process. This has been misinterpreted as cutting staff, as in “running a lean operation”. They’re not the same thing. The next time you see a CEO announcing that they are going to cut jobs as part of their Lean Six Sigma adoption, you can be pretty sure they have no clue what they are talking about.
I’ve seen other piss poor analogies of Lean applied to software as well. To give one example, some claim that rarely used features or commented out code are wastes of over-production. In manufacturing, when a new product is introduced, first it gets designed by an engineer. If it is a high-volume, low-mix environment, there’s typically a pre-production run to iron out the kinks. If it is a low-volume, high-mix environment, it often gets prototyped by one or more technicians, assembly workers, and engineers. If you have waste in a process, the prototyping stage is where you want to discover it – before production is ramped up – so it can be identified and eliminated. The problem with the software / Lean-waste analogy is that most code development is more like the prototyping stage than the manufacturing stage. You don’t write code once, then create the exact same code over and over again.
Six Sigma is a collection of tools for problem solving and quality improvement. Central to it’s theme is DMAIC – define, measure, analyze, improve, and control, and it relies heavily on statistical analysis. While it has been applied successfully to service based organizations where the procedures are very standardized, such as healthcare, it’s bit of a stretch to apply it to software development.
Microsoft Leapfrogs Google in Search Traffic
Free Inno Setup Skins from CodeJock
Free is good. Free that makes my product look better is great.
If you’re an Inno Setup user, take a peek at the free skins from Code Jock. The gallery of styles is here. They add a bit of polish and take only a few minutes to add it to your setup. It does add about 300 kb, so if you obsess about download size, it may not be for you.
I used the Office 2007 skin. Here’s the before:
Here’s the after:
I wonder if I can get Skinned for Vista Certified.