Staff
Bill Manville
Bill Manville is the founder of the business and its Principal Consultant.
After a first degree in Mathematics at Oxford in 1969 he obtained a distinction in the Diploma in Computer Science at Cambridge and then a Ph. D. on Microprogramming Support for Programming Languages, under the supervision of Prof. Maurice Wilkes.
He then joined GEC Computers Ltd at Borehamwood where he joined a small team of programmers developing compilers (for Coral 66 and FORTRAN 77) and operating systems for the GEC 4000 Series mini-computer. He then led the software and microprogram development team for the 4090 computer.
In 1981 he moved to Oxford to join Research Machines (now RM plc) as Software Development Manager. Here he oversaw the development of systems and application software for the Z80-based microcomputers, an early networking product based on Digital Research's CP/Net, the RM Nimbus (based on Intel 80186) which ran version 1 of Microsoft Windows and MS-NET, and the subsequent IBM-compatible PCs running on Microsoft LAN Manager.
While at RM he became an enthusiastic user of Microsoft Excel and adept at developing Excel-based applications using the old XLM macro language. When a company restructuring in 1993 gave him the opportunity to pursue other interests, he decided to form his own business to develop applications based on the Microsoft Office applications.
Fortunately Microsoft rolled out the Visual Basic for Applications language across the Office suite soon after this, and VBA has been the main technology he has used since then, programming applications built around Excel, Access, Powerpoint, Word, Outlook and SQL Server.
As well as developing diverse applications for clients he has written and delivered a training course on using VBA and Excel and acted as technical editor on a several of the best books on the subject. He regularly answers questions on the Forumania Microsoft Office forum. He was awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 23 years from 1995 to 2018.
Associates
We have a network of Associates with similar or complementary skills whom we can call on to assist in client projects. They are mostly either members of the Microsoft MVP community, such as Jan Karel Pieterse, or former colleagues from RM, such as Martyn Matthews