Excel : The Missing Manual (Missing Manual)

Rating:
Summary: comprehensive and concise
Review: I'm a little leery of taking the title "Missing Manual" literally. Other books in this series have discussed the Macintosh and other Apple offerings, where indeed typically Apple provided only a paucity of information in its manuals. But for Excel, Microsoft does offer comprehensive hardcopy documentation. This book is really one of a numerous set of third party offerings that try to improve on Microsoft.

The strongest argument for this book is that it appears to combine a comprehensive description of Excel with a conciseness of that explanation. In other words, it really doesn't belong in the Missing Manual series, but rather in O'Reilly's regular and long running series of texts, that share these properties. You know, the books with the purple covers.

Granted, the book is bulky. But that reflects over a decade of Excel being continually refined and added to. The conciseness of the explanations means typically some prior exposure to spreadsheets in general, and Excel in particular, would greatly aid your understanding.

Rating:
Summary: Ideal Excel walkthrough
Review: This is the ideal Excel walkthrough. It's a balanced blend of basic and advanced information that has a gentle learning curve that will take you all the way from creating your first spreadsheet through the basics of macro development. The book is organized into eight parts, though the first four make up the majority of the book. Part one covers the basics of editing, files, printing, saving. Part two is all about formula creation. Part three is about templates and lists. Part four is about charting and graphics. After that it's into networking, macros, and more advanced topics.

The writing is excellent and the use of screenshots is effective and not overwhelming as with other books. A superb walkthrough of the fundamentals of Excel.