Learn Excel from Mr. Excel: 277 Excel Mysteries Solved - Bill Jelen
Containing 277 business case studies that illustrate nearly every aspect of Excel, this book presents real-life business problems and works them through to their solutions. In addition to exemplary solutions, each case analysis considers alternate approaches and gotchas, and includes a summary of the necessary commands and functions. Excel files that can be downloaded and worked through step-by-step are included for each case
This is one of those books that don’t really contain anything new. What they do instead is present things in a way that as you read it you tend to say ‘Of course, that’s the way I can do that.’
For instance, suppose you want to sort a spreadsheet on only the first three digits of an account number. You turn to page 147. It says, ‘Create a new column. Use the LEFT function to populate that column. Sort on the new column.’ It actually show you more instruction on how to do this, but that’s the idea. ‘Of course, you say, how obvious.’ Then why didn’t you think of it first?
To make it easier to find what you’re looking for, the book is broken into four sections: The Excel Environment, Calculating with Excel, Wrangling Data, Making Things Look Good. Each section then has a bunch of these ‘hints & tips’ I guess I’d call them. Alternatively there’s a fairly complete index that is organizated alphabetically rather than functionally.
I rank this an an excellent intermediate level book. If you don’t know what a spreadsheet does, you need a lower level book. If you want to learn about Macros and VBA, you want a higher level. But regardless of your level, you’ll find at least a few ‘Of course’s.’
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November 12th, 2006 05:48
very nice book, thank you