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Why Does Excel Incorrectly Treat 1900 as a Leap Year?

Summary by GIGAZINE
Microsoft's spreadsheet software, Excel, treats the year 1900 as a leap year, even though it wasn't actually one. Microsoft explains that this is for compatibility with older spreadsheet software, and Joel Spolsky, who started working on the Excel team in 1991, also documented the situation on his blog in 2006.
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Why Does Excel Incorrectly Treat 1900 as a Leap Year?

Microsoft's spreadsheet software, Excel, treats the year 1900 as a leap year, even though it wasn't actually one. Microsoft explains that this is for compatibility with older spreadsheet software, and Joel Spolsky, who started working on the Excel team in 1991, also documented the situation on his blog in 2006.

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GIGAZINE broke the news on Saturday, March 21, 2026.
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