Excel 2007: The Missing Manual

Just like the cover says... "The book that should have been in the box." Most people only take advantage of about 2% of Excel's power. If you want to do more that add and subtract and would like to see Excel do truly amazing things, you must have this book. I'll never understand why MicroSoft spends so much time building such a feature rich program as Excel and refuses to publish a guide because these things just ought to be intuitave. They are not only non intuitive but many of the more powerful features are actually hidden. The secrets will be revealed with The Missing Manual.

I love these Missing Manuals for Excel. The descriptions are written in a clear conversational tone, and the examples are easy to follow. I use Excel for basic list and schedule making, to type notes for college, to calculate statistics for my tennis team, and for different finance calculations and reports at work. Sometimes the help function that comes with Excel is sufficient for quick questions, but for more complicated use and/or plainer explanations, I prefer the book to the help function. I have the manuals for both Excel 2003 and 2007, and the manuals are not interchangeable for the two versions. Whichever version of Excel you use, whether you want to look up basic how-to's, do complicated computations, or get into the bells and whistles, I would recommend the Missing Manual.

Pro: This is the third Missing Manual book I've bought. The thing I appreciate most about all the Missing Manual books is the rigorous QA that ensures the reader will not be frustrated by errors. This is a clear, easy-to-follow, informative book. I highly recommend it. Con: The book's "Get Satisfaction" feedback website is poor. I was not able to leave a suggestion there, so I'll put in here. These are my suggestions: 1) Replace "Get Satisfaction" with a better feedback tool and 2) in the file name of "Missing CD" files, include a reference to the figure in the book. That will make it easier to use the CD examples along with studying the book.

Based on the above listed reviews, mine is going to be short and sweet. This is a book to have if you need to get up-to-speed with the new version of Excel. MS Excel is a de-facto standard in spreadsheet software, whether you like it or not. This book will take you from A to Z on the subject of Excel 2007. It provides real-life examples to real-life questions. There may be more simple books out there on the topic, but O'Reilly is my choice. 5 stars.

An easy to read and easy to understand manual. The Tip Paragraphs are very helpful. I really like the examples and the illustrations. The extensive sections on Formulas and Macros really makes this book powerful and invaluable. Althought the manual does not come with a CD, many examples and downloads are available online. I recommend this to any Excel 2007 user.