What is the significance of the number of columns (16384) in MS Excel 2016?

Question

I just noticed that the MS Excel column count increased from `ZZ` to `XFD`, i.e., 16,384 columns. What is the significance of this particular value? Why didn’t MS go further, up to `ZZZ`? Why did they stop at `XFD`?

Answer 1

I would speculate that the number of columns at 16,384 was likely chosen to optimize allocation of computer memory resources. Excel is performing ongoing checks to see if its cell limit has been exceeded. Note that 16,384 = 2^14 which represents a 3-letter "bit" in computing terms. However 2^15 would enter 4-letter bit territory which requires significantly more memory allocation to process. By limiting the bounds of the columns to 2^14, Excel is maximizing computer memory resources