MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000 : The Essential Excel Reference for Business Professionals

Rating:
Summary: Entirely Dispensable
Review: Billed as "essential" in its subtitle, I found this book to be nothing of the sort: Competent? Yes. Helpul? Marginally? Essential? No way.

"MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000" roams little farther than Excel's built-in help screens. Despite its billing, this guide adds nothing that would help an MBA (or anyone else, for that matter) with constructing more effective financial statements or do complex valuations. There is simply nothing here for the advanced student.

Some users may find it useful to have basic instructions compiled in a single printed volume. I do not. If you are seeking a basic book on Excel, I suspect that this one will not disappoint you. If, on the other hand, you are seeking to improve on a passing familiarity with Excel then I recommend that you continue looking.

Rating:
Summary: Entirely Dispensable
Review: Billed as "essential" in its subtitle, I found this book to be nothing of the sort: Competent? Yes. Helpul? Marginally? Essential? No way.

"MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000" roams little farther than Excel's built-in help screens. Despite its billing, this guide adds nothing that would help an MBA (or anyone else, for that matter) with constructing more effective financial statements or do complex valuations. There is simply nothing here for the advanced student.

Some users may find it useful to have basic instructions compiled in a single printed volume. I do not. If you are seeking a basic book on Excel, I suspect that this one will not disappoint you. If, on the other hand, you are seeking to improve on a passing familiarity with Excel then I recommend that you continue looking.

Rating:
Summary: Good for the undergraduate student maybe, but not the MBA
Review: I recommend this book to anyone interested in using Excel for constructing and analyzing financial statements. The book provides the templates and structures to get you on your way. With the clear explanations you will soon feel comfortable constructing your own economic models. Seeing the logic behind each line in the models is quite valuable as is the ability to use the other parts of the book for things such as running scenarios and developing statistical analysis.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT book, especially if they ever hire on Wall St. again
Review: I thought that I'd respond to the curious conflicts in reader reviews. If you read all the posted reviews, you'll note that 2-3 readers really don't like the MBA's Guide to Excel. Other readers really do like the book. I've thought about this a bit. And what I actually think is that both readers are right. And here's why I say this.

The critics make two points: One, that the book doesn't cover more than the online documentation covers. Two, that the book doesn't really help someone do upper-division, graduate finance stuff. Both points are right, sort of, but let me respond because I think it's easy to misunderstand the readers comments and because as the author I have a unique perspective on the book.

First, as regard to the point about the book not providing additional information, this isn't true. But the criticism hints at something that's important to consider. The first two-thirds of the MBA's Guide to Excel explains the mechanics of using Excel. This mechanical information is available or mostly available in the online help. This criticism, of course, can be made of any tutorial on Excel. However, for readers who would be happy to read 20 or 50 or 200 pages of onscreen help and don't care if the online help doesn't provide figures and practical business examples, online help is the better option. Some people should forego buying and reading a book. Many people do like books however. Ever when they cover much of the same ground.

As to the second criticism, that the book doesn't cover graduate finance topics, I think the point is very fair and an important point to consider. This book isn't the MBA's Guide to Corporate Finance. This book isn't about financial engineering with Excel. This book is a a business professional's reference to Excel. However, I must point out that it's simply inaccurate to say that the business projects covered in the last third of the book aren't useful to MBAs and other business professionals or aren't MBA-ish. For example, the business planning information (also known as financial statement modeling) goes way beyond the material covered in other Excel books and shows someone how to create a combined income statement, cash flow and balance sheet model. The same thing is true of the capital expenditure analysis. The same thing is true of the profit-volume-cost analysis. But, to be fair to the critical readers, the MBA's Guide to Excel is not an exhaustive compendeum of every business application of Excel. The book covers a handful of common business applications (business planning, capital expenditure analysis, profit-volume analysis, etc.). But it doesn't cover them all. And it emphasizes general business applications of Excel that might be useful in just about any business. It doesn't cover specialized applications of interest only to specific groups (financial engineers or CPAS) or specific industries.

The bottomline, I suggest, is that if you're a business user looking for an Excel tutorial or Excel reference, you'll be happy with the MBA's Guide to Excel. If you're already an experienced Excel user and want specialized knowledge about how to apply Excel to a specific problem, you may be disappointed by the book because it's possible the book won't cover the specific problem.

Hope that helps....

Rating:
Summary: Great Reference Book!
Review: Microsoft Excel 2000 is one of the most popular and pervasive softwares in American business today. In MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000: The Essential Excel Reference For Business Professionals, Stephen Nelson provides a step- by-step approach of novice users that begins with the basics and then moves on to jargon-free, "user friendly" introductions to all of Excel's business tools including PivotTables, PivotCharts, Solver, BackSolver, and Small Business Manager. A very highly recommended and comprehensive instructional text, MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000 is also enhanced with a CD providing starter and sample workbook.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: This book didn't seem to offer me anything that I didn't already get out of something like "Using Excel 2000". If you aren't an extensive user of Excel for financial modeling this might be helpful but it is of little value to the more experienced user and those who have done any amount of financial modeling.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Companion for Business
Review: This book is a great primer: not only for the aspiring MBA, but also for the business type who needs a refresher on how to put together balance sheets and more.

This book is split into three parts: Quick Primers, Excel in Business and Starter Workbooks. With the Quick Primers, anyone can learn to be a pro on Excel. Excel in Business covers basic financial and statistical calculations. The Starter Workbooks provide templates for anyone in business to work out key financial statements and business plans.

The MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel would also work well as a companion guide for anyone who is taking beginning / intermediate level courses in Accounting or Finance.

Rating:
Summary: Parfait pour les utilisateurs intermédiaires de MS Excel
Review: This book is just what I needed. I already have a MOUS certification as an expert in Excel but this book will allow me to put to use my in depth knowledge of Excel's features in to practise in a practical business environment within in which I am currently working.
I love the middle section of the book where all the formulas are discussed and the spreadsheets pro formas are just fantastic.
Thanks Steve and thanks for your prompt reply to my recent email

Rating:
Summary: Sets The Standard For Excel Books
Review: This well-written book is for the professional business user of Microsoft Excel. The topics cover a range of business uses of Excel, including modeling, statistics, break-even analysis, forecasting, and depreciation. Also included for new users to Excel are QuickPrimers, short tutorials on Excel's worksheet and graphics capability.

The design of The MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000 is clean and crisp and its contents speak to the user in a friendly yet knowledgeable voice. The book distinguishes itself from other Excel books by the inclusion of EasyRefreshers, a summary of business practices and processes, an additional benefit to the reader.

The MBA's Guide to Microsoft Excel 2000 helps you perform business spreadsheet tasks quickly and easily.