Programming with VBA allows spreadsheet manipulation that is awkward or impossible with standard spreadsheet techniques. The Windows version of Excel supports programming through Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is a dialect of Visual Basic. Subroutine in Excel calculates the square of named column variable x read from the spreadsheet, and writes it into the named column variable y. Microsoft allows for a number of optional command-line switches to control the manner in which Excel starts. Excel was not designed to be used as a database. In a more elaborate realization, an Excel application can automatically poll external databases and measuring instruments using an update schedule, analyze the results, make a Word report or PowerPoint slide show, and e-mail these presentations on a regular basis to a list of participants.

It also has a variety of interactive features allowing user interfaces that can completely hide the spreadsheet from the user, so the spreadsheet presents itself as a so-called application, or decision support system (DSS), via a custom-designed user interface, for example, a stock analyzer, or in general, as a design tool that asks the user questions and provides answers and reports. It has a programming aspect, Visual Basic for Applications, allowing the user to employ a wide variety of numerical methods, for example, for solving differential equations of mathematical physics, and then reporting the results back to the spreadsheet. It does this by simplifying large data sets via PivotTable fields.

A PivotTable is a tool for data analysis. It allows sectioning of data to view its dependencies on various factors for different perspectives (using pivot tables and the scenario manager).

In addition, it can display data as line graphs, histograms and charts, and with a very limited three-dimensional graphical display. It has a battery of supplied functions to answer statistical, engineering, and financial needs. Microsoft Excel has the basic features of all spreadsheets, using a grid of cells arranged in numbered rows and letter-named columns to organize data manipulations like arithmetic operations.

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