Excel 2003 Bible

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Only received the Book today - Rated
OK...received the book this morning so I haven't really read through it yet. It has a lot of pages!! ermm its very thick...looks impressive. What else? ermmmm its a reference book for more advanced use of Excel, so really its a 'no brainer'...any book would do.

A treasure trove, but missing some jewels - Rated
6 out of 5 for the depth this book goes into. Relatively readable (apart from the array formula section where the author loses any sense of the reality of spreadsheets producing paragraph long formulae which, despite being amazing, aren't much use in practice unless you have the book by your side at all times).

4 out of 5 for coverage. What's up, pivot tables hardly get a look in. Despite their extremely usefulness in many situations, the author doesn't really get to grips with them; I learnt a lot more about them banging my head against the screen than using this book.

So, useful book, but could be better in some areas.

Comprehensive Resource for Advanced and Simple Applications! - Rated
I usually avoid books about Microsoft software because I can usually muddle through and figure out what I want to do. If in doubt, I seek out a twelve-year-old who knows the answers. But this week I had a desire to create a unique chart for a client, and decided to see if Excel would help me make the chart. I had the good fortune to run across Excel 2003 Bible at the library, and took it home to skim. Within 45 minutes I had all the answers to my questions, and found a way to create a better chart than I had originally planned to make. That was well worth my time. I'm sure that I would never have found the alternatives on my own that the book pointed me to.

Intrigued by the help I got, I went back and read the simple sections as well. I was impressed by how thorough all of the material is. You are given many different ways to accomplish the same task, along with the pros and cons of why to go one way versus another. I also appreciated the many graphics in the book to show what the screens look like.

The book is also backed up with a CD to run simulations and a web site where you can get more help.

If you think you may ever want to do advanced applications of Excel, I strongly encourage you to read this book. I particularly liked the charting and analysis sections.

As I finished this book, I realized that I usually employ Excel to get tasks done faster . . . and hadn't given much thought to how to complete them better. I suspect that much data could be made more usable and valuable for me and others if I think about how to employ all of Excel's tools in advance.