{"id":56911,"date":"2025-10-06T01:06:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T01:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/56911\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T01:06:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T01:06:12","slug":"from-spreadsheet-to-ai-powerhouse-and-the-israeli-team-behind-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/56911\/","title":{"rendered":"From spreadsheet to AI powerhouse \u2014 and the Israeli team behind it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of Excel, one of the most powerful and influential tools ever created by the global software industry. When Microsoft\u2019s now-legendary spreadsheet program was born \u2014 originally for Apple\u2019s rival Macintosh computer \u2014 it wasn\u2019t the first of its kind. Its predecessor, Lotus 1-2-3, still dominated the market.<\/p>\n

What began as a simple, focused tool for accountants and bookkeepers evolved into a global powerhouse that helped drive the personal computing revolution. From students to CEOs, from startups to governments \u2014 Excel is now used by some 800 million people worldwide.<\/p>\n

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Tamar Tzruya Bar-Zakai and Yair Helman <\/p>\n

(Photo: Ido Erez)<\/p>\n

What is less known is that a decisive share of this phenomenal success \u2014 which has earned Microsoft billions over the years \u2014 belongs to hundreds of engineers in Excel\u2019s Israeli development center in Herzliya, and to the two people who lead it: Tamar Tzruya Bar-Zakai, 54, and Yair Helman, 56. The pair, among Microsoft\u2019s longest-serving and most senior executives (Helman has been with the company for 28 years, Tzruya for \u201conly\u201d 16), both live in Even Yehuda and have played a key role in transforming Excel \u2014 especially over the past decade \u2014 from a technical, even dull spreadsheet into a dynamic online platform now undergoing a revolution through artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Tzruya has also become something of a Microsoft celebrity. Over the past two years, her short instructional videos on Microsoft Israel\u2019s Instagram and TikTok pages have drawn millions of views, tens of thousands of likes, and countless shares.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven before I joined the team,\u201d she says, \u201cI managed my whole household in Excel \u2014 tracking family expenses, comparing mortgage offers and for simpler things too. I used to travel abroad a lot, and when my parents came to look after the kids, they always found a printed Excel sheet waiting \u2014 a daily schedule showing what to put in each child\u2019s sandwich, when school ends, which kid needs to go to which activity and when, who drives, who picks up. My father always told my sisters, \u2018Learn from Tami \u2014 she\u2019s got it all on one organized sheet, no questions asked.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the tech world, Tzruya and Helman are rare birds \u2014 both in age and tenure. \u201cWhen I started here as a student,\u201d laughs Helman, \u201cI swore I wouldn\u2019t be like my father, who worked his entire life at one company. And here I am, still at Microsoft.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Helman is Microsoft\u2019s Vice President and Head of Excel Core Engineering, responsible for the product\u2019s technical backbone. Under his leadership, the team launched Excel\u2019s first online version in 2010, which made it accessible via any web browser without installation. His team also developed features such as \u201cFlash Fill,\u201d which lets users input a few examples and automatically generates a matching formula, and tools that allow importing data directly from the internet or even from a photo of a table.<\/p>\n

Helman, a father of three including 26-year-old twins, was born in Kiryat Bialik and grew up in Ma\u2019alot. \u201cI was a computer whizz,\u201d he recalls. \u201cMy father worked at Rafael (state-owned defense technology company), bought a computer and I somehow taught myself to program.\u201d After serving in an elite IDF unit, he studied computer engineering at the Technion. He joined Microsoft as a student, working for years in search, cybersecurity and databases. In 2014, after a four-year posting at company headquarters in Seattle, he joined the newly formed Excel group in Israel.<\/p>\n

If Helman oversees development, Tzruya \u2014 born in Jerusalem and also a mother of three \u2014 leads product management, setting Excel\u2019s vision, strategy and user experience. She is one of four global Microsoft executives who shape Excel\u2019s worldwide direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved technology,\u201d she says. \u201cFor years, my father proudly told everyone that the doorbell in our house was built by his daughter when she was seven.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Microsoft HQ in Seattle <\/p>\n

(Photo: AP\\Ted S. Warren)<\/p>\n

She served as an operations clerk in the Israeli Air Force and later studied computer science, statistics and operations research at Tel Aviv University. She then spent nine years at Nokia-Siemens Networks, managing teams in Israel, India, China and Poland.<\/p>\n

After the birth of her third daughter, she joined Microsoft \u2014 \u201cI was looking for a change,\u201d she says \u2014 and soon moved with her family to Seattle, where she headed Outlook\u2019s anti-spam division.<\/p>\n

Originally designed for a niche audience of finance professionals who needed a fast and accurate way to perform complex calculations, Excel\u2019s appeal has expanded dramatically over time. Today, virtually every business \u2014 large or small \u2014 uses it to manage and analyze data, from sales tracking to inventory control.<\/p>\n

It has become the default software for anyone dealing with information: HR managers, marketers, project leaders, even journalists. Students use it to plan coursework, researchers to analyze data, families to budget expenses and artists to create unusual works of digital art.<\/p>\n

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World Excel Championship <\/p>\n

(Photo: Screengrab)<\/p>\n

Each year, Las Vegas even hosts the World Excel Championship (FMWC) \u2014 a three-day marathon of formulas and problem-solving. The most recent final was broadcast live on ESPN and YouTube, attracting more than 100,000 viewers.<\/p>\n

When did the turning point come \u2014 the one that made Excel what it is today?
\nHelman: \u201cIn 1994\u201395, there were two key breakthroughs. The first was the ability to create filters \u2014 for example, to take tens of thousands of rows of data and focus only on quarterly sales in Asia. The second was the addition of VBA, an easy internal programming language that allowed anyone to create automated actions that couldn\u2019t be defined by formulas. Suddenly, people who weren\u2019t trained in programming could build their own personalized solutions for their specific needs. Overnight, VBA became the most popular programming language in the world. In 2007, we increased Excel\u2019s limit from 64,000 rows to one million, turning it into a program capable of handling massive amounts of data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tzruya: \u201cAnd then came the ability to collaborate on shared files. Imagine you and I working on the same spreadsheet simultaneously: I update one cell while you update the same one, and you want to hit Undo on your last change. How do you make sure you don\u2019t cancel mine?\u201d<\/p>\n

Helman: \u201cThe most dramatic change happened when Satya Nadella became CEO. In the old days, we used to say, \u2018Windows is ours \u2014 we\u2019ll build the best products for it.\u2019 He changed the mindset completely. He decided we needed to bring our products to wherever users are \u2014 to Mac, to Android, to iPhone, even to the browser. That\u2019s how we created Excel for the Cloud, accessible from any web browser and capable of performing exactly the same calculations as the desktop version. It was a tectonic shift \u2014 one that demanded huge investments in both funding and manpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella <\/p>\n

(Photo: Bloomberg)<\/p>\n

Tzruya: \u201cThe cloud eliminated all the complexity of version management, installations, compatibility, and training. The software is always up to date \u2014 \u2018through the air.\u2019 Today, anyone opening Excel on any device or platform sees the same thing. From that point on, we were able to turn Excel Online into a platform for innovation. We draw on an incredible fan community eager to contribute and influence the product, which lets us constantly test new ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent months, Microsoft has begun integrating advanced artificial intelligence tools into Excel. The new version, equipped with Copilot, Microsoft\u2019s AI assistant, can analyze text, suggest more efficient ways to organize data, \u201cclean\u201d errors and inconsistencies and generate complex formulas based on natural-language instructions. It can even identify hidden insights in data and automatically produce summaries and reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cForgive me,\u201d the interviewer interjects, \u201cbut for me Excel has always been a mysterious world of tables, formulas and numbers I have no idea how to handle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tzruya: \u201cExcel was always used at home too, but mostly by people who knew what they were doing \u2014 how to organize data, what formulas exist, how to calculate sums or averages. I remember speaking at a teachers\u2019 conference in London, performing some very basic action in Excel, and suddenly hearing a collective \u2018wow\u2019 from the audience. Most people simply didn\u2019t know the program could do that.<\/p>\n

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\u201cToday, with AI and Copilot, you no longer need to be an expert. And we\u2019re proud that our team here in Israel is responsible for key parts of that transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you reach users who struggle to find their way around spreadsheets?
\nTzruya: \u201cThere\u2019s already a chat option built into Excel. Say you have data about all your salespeople and want to know who the top three were in a certain region over specific months. You can just ask the question in plain language \u2014 and get the answer instantly. We also explain what we did, step by step, in simple terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, I can give Excel a task just like I\u2019d ask ChatGPT?
\nTzruya: \u201cExactly. And in Excel, you don\u2019t even need to provide the data \u2014 we gather it for you behind the scenes. And if you don\u2019t like the result, you can simply write, \u2018I didn\u2019t mean 2024 \u2014 I meant 2025.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

How organized does the source data need to be?
\nTzruya: \u201cOne of the things we\u2019re working on here in Israel is enabling Excel to understand data. Sometimes you don\u2019t even have to tell it what you want \u2014 once you\u2019ve built a table once, Excel learns it, translates it into a formula and tomorrow, next week or next year, it will calculate it the same way automatically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does Excel\u2019s AI suffer from the same \u201challucinations\u201d seen in other AI tools?
\nHelman: \u201cOnce Excel understands what you want and you approve it, the code, or formula, runs from that point on with 100 percent accuracy and consistency over time. At that stage, the calculation no longer depends on AI; it\u2019s a formula. So there\u2019s none of the random element that causes those \u2018hallucinations.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Could there ever be an Excel without tables?
\nTzruya: \u201cYes. You can work entirely through chat or with an agent \u2014 just ask for what you want in natural language. But ultimately, to turn your request into something structured and repeatable, we translate it into data \u2014 into a formula, a table or a piece of code, some kind of Excel element. It turns out that presenting information in a tabular format is still the most intuitive for users.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, say you have a customer database and you want to send each of them a personalized New Year\u2019s greeting. You type a sample message, and Excel figures out what you want to do. It fills out the entire table for you, opens a window explaining what it did and why, you approve it, and a formula is created. Next time you add a new customer, the process happens automatically.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you know the new features are actually successful?
\nTzruya: \u201cWhen we first launched Excel Online, we saw that most users didn\u2019t edit files at all. Over time, light editing began, then heavier editing, and suddenly users were creating functions, adding tables and we saw a jump in both usage and returning users. It was a complete transformation. We\u2019re seeing the same thing now with AI \u2014 once people realize it just works. I don\u2019t even write formulas myself anymore. I tell the chat what I want, give it one or two examples, and it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you decide what to add or remove from the software?
\nTzruya: \u201cWe have a process involving \u2018rings\u2019 of customers who get experimental versions and give feedback. Excel has a huge fan community \u2014 individuals and large companies \u2014 so we constantly test ideas with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing you learn quickly as a product manager is humility: you don\u2019t know everything. When we started developing Excel Online and I had to set priorities, I thought, \u2018Who prints anything anymore? We don\u2019t need a print command.\u2019 Then we found out that 20 percent of users still print. So no matter how diverse my team is, we can\u2019t always predict what hundreds of millions of users will want.\u201d<\/p>\n

I assume you have ways to measure all this.
\nTzruya: \u201cOf course. Microsoft tracks every detail \u2014 new sign-ins, user retention, returning users and more. Over time, we learned that simply knowing how many licenses you\u2019ve sold isn\u2019t enough. If users don\u2019t get real value, they won\u2019t renew. So it\u2019s crucial to see how actively they use Excel in the first month after purchase, then in the next three months, and so on \u2014 and to measure how often they use each feature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you know who your users are?
\nHelman: \u201cAbsolutely not. We\u2019re committed to the highest levels of privacy. I\u2019m not allowed to know who you are, your age, your job or what formula you wrote \u2014 nothing. But we can analyze statistics. We bend over backward to understand users\u2019 needs in other ways and improve accordingly. You, as an individual, aren\u2019t identifiable, but we can see through our internal analytics that tens of thousands of people work in Excel the same way you do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tzruya: \u201cIn other words, we can know if people with lower Excel proficiency are using the program \u2014 it doesn\u2019t matter if they\u2019re doctors, taxi drivers or plumbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

What will Excel look like five years from now?
\nTzruya: \u201cWith the pace of technology today, it\u2019s impossible to predict exactly where we\u2019ll be in five years. But I can say that AI will meet users right at the \u2018work floor,\u2019 giving them smart suggestions to boost speed and efficiency.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond that, users will converse with Excel. On one side of the screen you\u2019ll see the chat, and on the other, the spreadsheet evolving in real time \u2014 side by side, like Google Translate. With what we\u2019re doing now in AI, we\u2019re influencing how hundreds of millions of people work every day. We\u2019re changing the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helman: \u201cThe needs will remain the same, but we\u2019ll make the solutions simpler and more accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n

And will we need fewer workers?<\/p>\n

Helman: \u201cNo. With the same number of employees, we\u2019ll simply be able to achieve much more. If in the past they worked with 30 clients, now they\u2019ll be able to work with 300 \u2014 and you\u2019ll gain a deeper understanding of your business, guiding it toward more precise markets. We\u2019ll reach places we couldn\u2019t even imagine before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tzruya: \u201cI\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s bizarre, but in Japan, people write their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s in Excel. Many people also use Excel for art: they turn each cell into a pixel, fill it with color, and create incredible digital works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helman: \u201cWhen I started here as a student, I swore I wouldn\u2019t be like my father, who worked his entire life in one company. Twenty-eight years later, I\u2019m still at Microsoft. We\u2019re a group of 10 to 15 people with similar seniority, all now holding senior positions in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Digital art: Artists use Excel\u2019s table cells as pixels to build intricate works, reshaping each cell into a perfect square. The Israeli company Datarails even created the world\u2019s first NFT art collection made entirely in Excel, depicting scenes from the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Video games: Excel\u2019s geometric grid provides the perfect canvas for retro-style games. Independent developers have used Excel\u2019s internal VBA programming language to create versions of Snake, Tetris, Minecraft and Monopoly. The most popular of all: Pac-Man in Excel.<\/p>\n

Robotics design: By combining formulas and VBA commands, Excel can simulate the movements of an industrial robot and show how it reacts to different commands.<\/p>\n

Physics simulations: Excel can even simulate physical processes \u2014 for example, the motion of a bullet. By entering parameters such as speed and angle, users can calculate its trajectory and plot its exact path.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s unofficial relationship with Israel is unusually close. Its Israeli development center was the company\u2019s first outside the United States and remains one of its three most important hubs worldwide. Around 30 different product groups develop Microsoft\u2019s most sensitive core technologies in Israel \u2014 roughly half of them, ironically, in cybersecurity, privacy and data protection.<\/p>\n

True, the company\u2019s bond with Israel is first and foremost pragmatic: the talent, drive and creativity found here are worth a fortune. But anyone who has followed Microsoft\u2019s internal culture over the years knows it runs deeper than that. The company has acquired Israeli firms, partnered with startups, helped local organizations integrate its technologies and donates millions each year to a vast range of social causes.<\/p>\n

In 2023, it launched an Israeli cloud region, allowing secure local data storage. It was no coincidence that CEO Satya Nadella personally met with the head of Unit 8200 in 2021 to formalize the unit\u2019s use of Microsoft\u2019s cloud servers. Nor was it a coincidence that, immediately after the October 7 attacks, Microsoft offered its cloud services and infrastructure to Israel\u2019s defense establishment \u2014 without hesitation \u2014 to assist in the effort to rescue the hostages.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years, however, the heads of all major tech companies have faced immense pressure to cut ties with Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees comb through internal emails searching for \u201cevidence,\u201d law firms are hired to reexamine contracts, and protests disrupt corporate events. \u201cYour technology reeks of blood,\u201d demonstrators accuse. \u201cIt\u2019s killing children in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

That charge rides the global wave of outrage but also strikes a moral nerve for these companies \u2014 both in the eyes of their worldwide customers and, often, their own families. No global CEO can ignore that kind of moral scrutiny, heightened by the horrific images on TV screens.<\/p>\n

At first, Microsoft tried to hold its ground, citing an external review that cleared it of any direct military involvement with Israel. But after a detailed Guardian investigation, the company came under renewed pressure and was forced to order another, deeper inquiry.<\/p>\n

Israel, for its part, could have spared itself this fiasco. At such a sensitive time, it could have paid closer attention to Microsoft\u2019s quiet warnings and been more careful not to violate usage terms \u2014 we were given a finger; why take the whole hand? When the red lights began flashing, Israel could have stepped back in time.<\/p>\n

There will likely be no state commission of inquiry into this blunder \u2014 but we will all pay the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of Excel, one of the most powerful and influential tools ever created…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-56911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}