Excel 2003 Personal Trainer [With CDROM]

I purchased Excel Personal Trainer because I had a horrible college professor and therefore never learned this program properly, and as a soon to be college grad, Excel is essential for me to know. I have to say that I am very pleased with this book. It is very easy to follow, and I like the fact that there are practice lessons as well as illustrations. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who needs to know Excel quickly like i did.

I have three of the O'Reilly series Microsoft training books (word, excel, powerpoint). They are all well crafted, with easily understandable instruction, thorough reviews at the end of the chapters, quizzes and, most helpful of all, a cd of practices exercises you use while working your way through the book.

I love the fact that these Personal Trainer programs by O'Reilly are "simple stupid." What is in the book can stand alone; what is on the cd can stand alone. If you work them together, what shows in the book, matches the screen. I like that. It is easy to learn; easy to follow. I recommend them highly to everyone.

I am far from computer illterate (20+ years coding in C/C++ and assembly) but I never had to use Excel until now. I found this book to be just perfect! I looked at a lot of other books in the bookstore but except for this they were all reference style without any exercises which is useless for me, like trying to learn a language from a dictionary. You can read your way through the first few pages but after that the step-by-step instructions with the sample spread sheets for each exercise are great! I am using Quattro not Excel but everything works about the same or you can figure it out from Quattro's help.

This Personal Trainer book from O'Rielly is (to me at least) a new tutorial type introduction to Excell 2003. It uses a cartoon SuperHero to add some interest to the otherwise pretty dull part of computer training. Without something like this, how can you stay awake. This is an absolutely beginners level book, starting out with: "Berfore starting Microsoft Excel 2003, you have to make sure your computer is on -- if it's not, turn it on!" Now that's pretty beginning level. As you would expect with a book starting with level, it goes into a lot of detail about what spreadsheets are for, and what you can do with them. But by the end of the book you're moving along at a fairly high level. Chapter 11, for instance is on Pivot Tables, not at all a function tought by most beginner level books. The disk that comes with the book is an "Interactive Simulation Software [that] Replicates the Experience of using Excel 2003." All in all, this book is the friendliest, most open and easy to understand tutorial of its type that I've ever seen.