I don't have know the answer to your question, but if you're looking for a
little history (but no answer to your specific post), you could visit John
Walkenbach's site:
http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/index.htm
I don't know the answer either; I suspect no-one outside of Microsoft
does. In all probability it was just one of those "marketing-speak"
things where Access is a by-word for giving you "access" to data,
Excel is what that product is intended to do relative to its
competitors (specifically Lotus 1-2-3), and Word... well, what better
name to be synonymous with what a word processor does? As for Outlook?
Well, don't stand near one (especially one overlooking a very deep
valley) when you're using the product since it'll be a toss-up between
whether you throw your PC off it, or yourself. (It has good and bad
points, but IMHO Outlook has always been, and still is, the "problem
child" of Office.)
The only reference I've seen to the origins of Excel's name was in a
book called "Hard Drive - Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft
Empire" by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. It's rather old now and
probably out of print, but you may be able to find a copy at a
library.
Back in '84, Gates had a bee in his bonnet about Lotus 1-2-3.
Understandable, since for FY85 Lotus had greater revenue from 1-2-3
sales than MS did from all of its products. This caused MS to start a
project called Odyssey, the code name for what would become Excel.
(Odyssey is also the name of the Apollo 13 CSM that blew its insides
out resulting in the astronauts making a long, cold and uncomfortable
trip home in the lunar module, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence,
cough. Though they never DID build a lunar module with more than 256
columns and 65,536 rows, if I remember correctly.) Code names
undoubtedly come from somewhere, but for practical purposes they may
as well be random; "Chicago" was what eventually became Windows 95,
for example, and what the name "Longhorn" has to do with operating
systems is anyone's guess.
The idea for Odyssey arose at a late '83 retreat held by Gates, Jeff
Raikes and Charles Simonyi (the guy who came up with the Hungarian
naming convention, if you're into programming). MS had a spreadsheet
program called Multiplan, but Lotus was eating its dinner in the
marketplace.
Odyssey was originally being developed for the PC, with Doug Klunder
being the chief coder. In the meantime MS was starting to develop its
retail division and appointed Jerry Ruttenbur as Vice President of
Retail Sales. All the book has to say about the product name is that
"Ruttenbur was part of the group that came up with the name for the
Odyssey spreadsheet project - Excel".
At that point things took an odd turn; Lotus was about to launch a
product for the Macintosh called Jazz. MS didn't want Lotus to get a
foothold in the Mac software market the way it had in the PC one, so
Excel was switched to becoming a Mac product first, then it would
follow on the PC. (Of course the concern about securing market share
in Mac software later turned out to be largely irrelevant (no offence
to Mac users; I'm talking commercially only); but hey, it was the mid
80's and who knew? The Amiga still seemed a likely bet as a strategic
platform as well.)
The rest of the story is interesting, with Klunder quitting, his
successor having a heart attack under the pressure of getting the
product out and so on, but none of that (and little enough of the
above) is germane to your question.
