Trapeze (spreadsheet program)

Trapeze is a discontinued spreadsheet program for Macintosh systems running classic Mac OS. It introduced the concept of using named ranges for most operations instead of cell addresses, allowing formulas to be freed of the location of the data on the page. This, in turn, made updating the sheets by moving data around a safe operation, whereas in contemporary programs like Microsoft Excel and Lotus 1-2-3 this often led to broken formulas. The system did not rely on the sheet as the basis for storage, and allowed multiple tables, charts, graphics and text, which they referred to as "blocks", to be positioned freely.

Introduced in January 1987 at MacWorld San Francisco, sales were not strong and the company formed to introduce the product was insolvent by the fall. The company was purchased by a minicomputer software vendor as part of an effort to break into the microcomputer market, but they decided to exit the business and sold it off again to a new company, DeltaPoint, in 1989. When DeltaPoint's DeltaGraph became a huge hit later that year, sales of Trapeze were ended.

This basic concept of using separate blocks of data and their names to create formulas was the major feature of Lotus Improv, introduced in 1990. This concept is also seen in the modern Apple Numbers.