Excel 2002 Formulas (Professional Mindware) [Paperback]

I moved onto this book from his Excel 2000 Bible, as I was eager to learn some tricks of the trade. Despite this being the Excel 2002 version of the book, the majority of it applied to Excel 97 upwards - any compatability issues where formulas contain Excel 2000 and Excel 2002 specific functions are clearly marked.

The book is divided into the following parts;

1 - Basic Information
This covers a basic description of Excel, facts about formulas, and using named ranges. Complete beginners may not find this enough - I'd suggest Walkenbach's excellent Excel Bible for them.

2 - Using Functions in your Formulas
Takes you through text manipulation, dealing with times and dates, counting and summing, lookups, databases and lists, and various other calculations - the 40 pages on dates and time alone are worth their weight in gold! Excellent stuff.

3 - Financial Formulas
Definitely not for the faint of heart - takes you through the usage of all the financial formulas that Excel has to offer.

4 - Array Formulas
A short part covering the capabilities of array formulas - far more useful than the coverage that array formulas received in the previous book I had read.

5 - Miscellaneous Formula Techniques
An excellent reference section where you can gain some great tips and techniques. Covers intentional circular references, charting techniques, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation, the creation of 'megaformulas', and various debugging methods when things go wrong.

6 - Developing Custom Worksheet Functions
A brief part covering the wonders of VBA, from the basics of VBA and programming concepts, to a variety of custom function examples.

An essential purchase. This book showed me some really interesting ways to put the things I'd previously learnt into practice. Could be a problem for a complete beginner, but an ideal companion for the intermediate Excel user, or for the beginner who sticks his neck out a little.

There are a number of chapters in the book that it would be worth buying the book for any of them alone eg:-

Chapter 4 - Introducing Worksheet Functions
Chapter 6 - Working with dates and times
Chapter 7 - Counting and Summing Techniques
Chapter 8 - Lookups
Chapter 14 - Introducing Arrays
Chapter 15 - Performing Magic with Array Formulas
Chapter 18 - Pivot Tables

There are also chapters devoted to Financial formulas that are priceless in a Finance environment where Excel is the dominant resource available to users.

If I sound over enthusiastic then tough, because I am not apologising for that. I have been using the microsoft excel newsgroups for a couple of months now, simply to try and improve my knowledge of Excel and it's capabilities. I have printed off and saved many many notes to trawl through at my leisure, but all I really needed to do was buy this book. Everything I wanted to learn has been presented in a logical and easy to understand manner, and for anyone else hoping to take their knowledge of Excel and it's capabilities to the next level, I would have no hesitation in recommending this book.

Put it on your Xmas list, or if no-one is going to buy you any presents then beg or borrow the money to get it, but just BUY IT!!

Regards
Ken.............

Thanks John