Learning to Excel

Published on September 23, 2007

The book is for advanced beginners and intermediate Excel users.

by John Walkenbach

Published by Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated

506 pages

US$39.99 at BarnesandNobles.com

Reviewed by Paisal Chuenprasaeng

The Nation

Microsoft Excel is recognised as the best electronic spreadsheet and an application which businesses cannot live without. Microsoft Excel recently released the 2007 version with a lot of new improvements and a new user interface.

Anyone who would like to be able to master the new version of Excel 2007 quickly should find "John Walkenbach's Favourite Excel 2007 Tips & Tricks" very useful.

Walkenbach is a wellknown guru when it comes to Microsoft Excel.

The author, principal of JWalk and Associates Inc, has written more than 50 books and 300 articles and reviews for publications including PC World, InfoWorld, and Windows. He also maintains the popular Spreadsheet Page at jwalk.com/ss, which gets thousands of visitors each month and prominently features all of his books with links to Amazon.

Walkenbach's include "Excel 2003 Bible", "Excel Charts", "Excel 2003 Formulas", "Excel VBA Programming For Dummies", "Excel 2007 Bible", "Excel 2007 Formulas" and "Excel 2007 Power Programming" with Visual Basic for Applications.

According to Walkenbach, Excel 2007 has a new user interface, new open file formats and a larger worksheet grid.

"You'll find worksheet tables, 100 levels of easier formula constructions, betterlooking charts, unlimited colour choices, SmartArt, a handy page layout view, new conditional formatting options, new collaboration features, a very useful compatibility checker, workbook themes - and even 'skins' so you can change the look of the entire program," he says.

He did a good job in "John Walkenbach's Favourite Excel 2007 Tips & Tricks". The book consists of a series of good tips and tricks that cover all aspects of Excel, including ways of maximising the power of Excel to create robust applications and shortcuts that will speed up application development with Excel.

The book is for advanced beginners and intermediate Excel users who want to get some insider tips and tricks to enable them to take their Excel skills to the next level.

The book is organised into 13 parts - Part I: Basic Excel Usage, Part II: Data Entry, Part III: Formatting, Part IV: Basic Formulas and Functions, Part V: Useful Formula Examples, Part VI: Conversions and Mathematical Calculations, Part VII: Charts and Graphics, Part VIII: Data Analysis and Lists, Part IX: Working With Files, Part X: Printing, Part XI: Spotting, Fixing, and Preventing Errors, Part XII: Basic VBA and Macros, and Part XIII: Sources for Excel Information.

Of course, to make the most of this book, readers to have an installed a copy of Excel 2007.

Some tips involve entering codes of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is a programming language built into Excel. The book shows how to enter VBA codes with not much trouble.

The first part is for beginners. It has 26 tips covering some fundamental uses of Excel from selecting cells and navigating sheets in the workbook to hiding rows and columns.

Part IV is very useful. It has 27 tips on basic formulas and functions to make workbooks more powerful. A tip titled "Using Formula AutoComplete" is really useful. Formula AutoComplete is a new feature of Excel 2007. When an equal sign and the first letter of a function is typed in a cell, Excel displays a dropdown list box that contains all the functions that begin with the letter.

Part VI provides nine useful tips on conversions and mathematical calculations. Among other things, there are tips on converting between measurement systems, converting temperatures, calculating area, surface, circumference and volume.

Charts and graphics make a range of incomprehensible numbers make sense. Part VII provides 22 tips on creating charts and graphics. The useful tips include how to use Excel to create a printed greeting card and how to make a chart the same size, how to create a selfexpanding chart and to how to create a thermometerstyle chart.

Excel deals with data, which are in the form of a list. Comparing the lists and analysing data is essential for businesses. Part VIII provides 15 tips on how to deal with lists and data analysis.

For example, there are tips on how to put advance filter results on a different sheet, how to compare two ranges with conditional formatting, how to create a list from a summary table as well as how to create a quick frequency tabulation.

Part XII is very useful for those who want to automate some aspect of Excel. This part provides 15 tips on how to write macros and VBA codes to automate certain tasks or operations in Excel. For example, there are tips on how to display popup messages and how to make Excel talk.

If readers want to learn more about Excel, they will find Part XIII useful. The author compiles a comprehensive list of Web addresses for searching for more advanced knowledge on Excel.