By Hiran de Silva
The story of Excel is filled with innovation, reinvention, and community. But buried beneath the noise of dashboards, influencers, and modern tools lies a powerful, forgotten chapter: ADO (ActiveX Data Objects). This is a timeline tracing how ADO rose, transformed careers, powered serious enterprise-grade architecture—and was quietly written out of Excel’s official history by social media.
December 1993 — (Predecessor of) ADO Appears on the Scene
I recently rewatched a historic Microsoft DevCast from December 1993—a full 3 hours and 42 minutes—Satya Nadella and the team showcased what would become the foundations of ADO. It was connectivity in Excel, but not as the average user knew it. This was about plumbing Excel into live data, databases, and enterprise systems.
It wasn’t just an add-on. It was a paradigm shift.
1997 — Discovery That Changed My Career
I discovered ADO in 1997, and the impact was immediate and profound. It wasn’t just a neat trick—it allowed me to triple my income using Excel. Suddenly, spreadsheets weren’t static files anymore—they became live interfaces to structured data sources. I was no longer building spreadsheets; I was building systems.
Early 2000s — Microsoft’s Connectivity Push
Around the late ’90s and early 2000s, Microsoft itself recognized the transformative power of connectivity. Their marketing emphasized this: “Something happens here, something happens there”—a philosophy brought to life by ADO. The Digital Nervous System widely evangelised by Bill Gates..
Yet curiously, while this connectivity became central to Office’s promise, ADO itself quietly receded from the spotlight.
2000–2003 — Excel Services: The Attempted Evolution
In the early 2000s, Microsoft attempted to formalize the client-server Excel model through Excel Services, a technology that aimed to make spreadsheets accessible and searchable via XML. This was a rationalization of ADO-style architecture—but it didn’t take off.
Why? It was too complicated. It required deep IT involvement, and developers at the time were more interested in JavaScript, dynamic web, and other emerging trends. Excel Services faded into obscurity.
Meanwhile — The Official History Airbrushes ADO
When I looked at the Financial Modeling World Cup handbook (or was it the Global Excel Summit?), I noticed something glaring: a timeline of Excel milestones with no mention of ADO. The most significant leap in Excel’s enterprise capabilities? Ignored.
I flagged it. No correction came.
The Demographic Shift — Power Users to Basic Users
In the 1990s, Excel attracted hobbyist programmers, enthusiasts, and system builders—people like me. We were power users from the home computing era, pushing boundaries and building models that rivaled small systems.
But in the 2000s, Excel’s user base exploded. Laptops became personal tools, and a new generation of users arrived—users with no background in development, or top business management. They used Excel as a calculator or simple list manager. A large sheet of paper. Nothing more.
The Rise of Influencers and “Excel Trolling”
Social media brought another twist. Suddenly, people with no serious Excel background—certainly not in managing business processes—became influencers. Some gave advice. Others, frankly, trolled.
This reminded me of the infamous trolling I saw on the Consultants newsgroup—ridiculous and hilarious in equal measure. But now, the trolling had consequences. These voices drowned out seasoned professionals, and with them, knowledge of ADO and true enterprise use cases.
Enter: Excel Hell
Naturally, with basic users designing critical spreadsheets, Excel Hell emerged. Businesses found themselves trapped in fragile, undocumented, siloed systems—built without architecture or best practices. This created an opening for:
- The “You Can’t Do That in Excel” crowd
- Vendors selling expensive FP&A tools
- The Luddite management class, scared not just of Excel but of people who know how to use Excel well
This anti-Excel sentiment grew into a market opportunity.
The Cloud Changes the Game Again
Fast forward to today. We now have cloud storage, APIs, and web-based integrations that ADO could have naturally evolved into. You can have a database in the cloud and plug Excel into it. That was always the vision.
Google Sheets and Excel for the Web offer web-based alternatives, but without the ADO-style client-server logic. They may look cloud-enabled, but they are fundamentally different in architecture.
Power Query: The Dumbing Down of Connectivity
Power Query emerged as a wizard-like interface for importing and transforming data. It’s great, and it’s popular—even my son and a friend in Sri Lanka knew about it.
But Power Query is designed for the mass market, not the professional Excel modeler. It simplifies, but it limits. It’s limited to stand-alone spreadsheets, by individuals who work in isolation, on a single machine – not enterprise process.
Beyond Power Query — The New ADO?
The modern answer to ADO is API-based integration: JavaScript, TypeScript, Office Scripts. These tools give professional users back the fine control they lost when ADO fell out of favor.
In 2001, I built a demo model that integrated Excel desktop and cloud-based data using a shared data layer—just as ADO intended. Later, developer colleague Bill Bekenn created a JSON parser to support an API I had written.
Conclusion — Why Has ADO Been Forgotten?
So, where did ADO go?
It’s still here. But it was quietly buried—lost in a demographic shift, corporate redirection, and the noise of social media. It was airbrushed out of Excel’s history, despite being its most powerful leap toward enterprise relevance.
But ADO’s spirit lives on in the APIs, in client-server thinking, and in those of us who still see Excel as a platform—not a product.
Note: in most cases, Excel can directly connect to a backend cloud database with ADO – without an API.
Let’s remember ADO—not for nostalgia, but for what it teaches us about connectivity, architecture, and what Excel can truly be. And go far beyond the limits of Power Query.
ABSTRACT
The Unsung History of Excel’s ADO Superpower
This piece recounts the story of ADO (ActiveX Data Objects), a powerful but now largely forgotten Excel feature introduced in the 1990s that allowed spreadsheets to connect with live data and enterprise systems. The author details how discovering ADO transformed their career, enabling them to build complex systems and significantly increase their income. While Microsoft initially promoted connectivity, ADO gradually faded from prominence, partly due to failed initiatives like Excel Services, a shift in Excel’s user base towards basic users, and the rise of social media influencers who overshadowed experienced professionals. The article concludes that ADO was essentially airbrushed out of Excel’s official history despite being crucial for its enterprise capabilities, although its core concept lives on in modern API-based integrations.
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