At the 2011 Worldwide Competition on Microsoft Office held in San Diego this week, 15-year-old from Cambridgeshire teenager Rebecca Rickwood – who was declared the winner in the Excel 2007 category - has been named the World Champion user of the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet software.

While as many as 228,000 international contestants participated in the competition, Rebecca topped a group of 79 finalists who competed against one another for the 5 coveted “champion” titles. The spreadsheet genius - who aims to become a computing expert - is a student of Sawtry Community College in Cambridgeshire.

Extremely modest in her acceptance of the 'Microsoft Excel world champion' award and a $5,000 prize, Rebecca said: “It's amazing. I didn't think I'd win it.”

Elaborating about the championship, Rebecca told the Telegraph that the contestants had to take an online qualifying exam, which she took in October last year. Later, at the end of June, she got a phone call saying that she had got the best score in the UK and was to participate in the world championship at San Diego --- and, finally, she bagged the top spot in the Excel 2007 category!

The other winners at the championship included Taiwanese Liao Yu-Xuan who was first in the PowerPoint 2007 category; and Japanese Mizuki Terao, who won the Word 2007 award.