How many people use Excel worldwide and how many people use Excel specifically in South Africa?

[taryn_1]

I am planning to use Excel with Power Pivot for my masters thesis and in order to justify the use of Excel over another Engineering/Statistical software, I would like to refer to the number of users of Excel worldwide and in South Africa ( therefore the solution I develop can be spread easily since the software to understand the format is easily available).

I was wondering if anybody could tell me where I could get/find the following statistics or reliable data on the following statistics:
a) The number of Excel users worldwide
b) The number of Excel users in South Africa
c) The general worldwide distribution of Excel users

I've tried searching the Microsoft website but I couldn't find anything
Thanks in Advance

 

[Peter_SSs]

I've moved your thread as I see it more as a "General Excel Discussion" rather than a specific question about Excel itself.
I think the thread would get buried very quickly in the general "Excel Questions" forum.

 

[RoryA]

If you're planning to involve PowerPivot, isn't a more relevant question how many users have access to (and/or use) that rather than Excel? That's going to be a much smaller number.

 

[taryn_1]

I thought that even normal Excel users could still view the PowerPivot Workbook even if they didn't have access to PowerPivot hence the reason I was asking about general Excel usage Statistics - like Access developer Extensions allows people without Access to view an Access database - I thought Powerpivot worked in the same way

 

[RoryA]

If you do literally mean just view (not change or interact with the pivots) then I believe you are correct (although I don't know for sure if 2003 and earlier can view them).

 

[Macropod]

Somehow I very much doubt you'll be able to find any meaningful statistics. MS might be willing & able to provide some sales stats for Office, but even those have little bearing on how many Office users actually use Excel.

 

[J.Ty.]

Look at this set of slides by people doing research about Excel.
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~black/S3S/PeytonJones.ppt‎

J.Ty.