Excel User Statistics

[SueMac]

On several of the videos, Bill mentioned some user stats like: of ____ many users, ___ % of them don't do much more than adding or summing.

I'd very much like to know where I can find some statistical data regarding Excel users and usage.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[Smitty]

Welcome to the Board!

I sent Bill's Project Manager a message asking if she had those factoids.

 

[MrExcel]

Microsoft generally announced the approximate number of Office users. The last factoid that I heard from Microsoft is that they believe Office is installed on 750 million computers. That is the number that I go with.

We did a survey here at MrExcel eight years ago that asked about 10 features in Excel. None of the features were used by more than 60% of the survey respondents. This is a fairly skewed statistic...people here are power users of Excel. When I mentioned that 50% of people from MrExcel have never used a pivot table, some associates at Microsoft said that in the real world, it is closer to only 1 in 5 use pivot tables. To see the results of my survey, go to http://www.mrexcel.com/press030702.shtml

Thanks to Customer Experience Improvement data, Microsoft knows the exact percentage of people who use any given feature, but as far as I know, they do not release this publicly. I have been in meetings where I questioned some of their generalities. I would ask something along the lines of "Really? everyone has to be using feature X". They pointed out that among the 750 million computers using Excel, there is a significant chunk of people whose use of Excel is to open an attachment and click Print. Thus, for any given feature, the number of people using that feature is generally less than anyone would expect, and certainly less than the results in my poll.

Bill