Nelly and Kelly Rowland's Microsoft Excel 'text' mystery has finally been solved

Somehow, it has been more than two decades since Kelly Rowland tapped out a message using Excel.

Yep, that Microsoft app you are most likely to use in the workplace, Rowland decided to type out a message on it.

I mean, technology has come a long way in 20 years, though I feel texting someone using Microsoft Excel was not remotely acceptable even in the early 2000s.

The music video for the 2002 track by Rowland, 'Dilemma', is perhaps one of the most well-known of the 21st century.

And it is, of course, famous for Rowland typing a message to Nelly not into a message system, but into Microsoft Excel.

I suppose the impressive part is the fact Rowland managed to get Excel onto a device so small.

But, the Microsoft software is certainly not designed for messaging, is it?

And as a result, the singer has become the subject of countless memes over the years.

Nelly/YouTube

Many people have questioned over the years why Rowland was frustrated at Nelly's failure to respond when she seemingly never successfully texted him in the first place, but Excel expert Dan Strong provided an answer in 2022.

In a video shared on TikTok, Strong explained that there is a way Rowland could have used Excel to get a message to Nelly.

Strong laid out a sequence of code that can be typed into the system in order to create a link to send an email.

He suggests that Kelly may have typed out the message we see in the video, "WHERE YOU AT? HOLLA WHEN YOU GET THIS," as a precursor to a complicated formula entry, which is as follows: "=HYPERLINK("mailto:[email protected]?subject=hey&body="&A1,"Send Email").

Mark Gunter/Getty Images for NAACP

Once you've got through all that, a link pops up which would, in theory, have allowed Rowland to send an email to Nelly.

Strong suggested that this was probably what the singer was about to do in the video, but that it was cut off for time purposes.

Rowland has actually spoken about the 'Dilemma' video in the past, as she was asked to explain her questionable actions in a 2019 interview on The Real.

"Guys, so here's the sitch, OK? I don't know what that is. I don't know what Microsoft Excel is," she admitted.

"I don't have a clue, so when I saw all these memes, I was like, 'I don't care.'"

"What is it? I don't know," added Rowland.

And during a 2024 interview on Mythical Kitchen, she said: "“Do you know how much flack I get from that?

"I'm so used to it now."