Microsoft Excel 97 [With *]

As with all the "Step by Step" books, this a wonderful source for the self-taught individual. I just passed my expert certification and felt very comfortable taking the test because I had a through understanding of the concepts, thanks to this book. It isn's a "Cram for Exam" book. It is for learning and retaining valuable techniques.

If you want to pass the MOUS Expert Level exam, you must at least study from this text. Those looking for a shortcut be warned: this text does not review the fundamental tasks from the Excel 97 Step By Step book. This book assumes you already know how to accomplish the basic tasks because the exercises jump to advanced tasks. Unless you are already skilled, you may get immediately lost on exercises. Although the combination of this text as well as the basic one mentioned earlier help in passing the Expert Level exam, the two are still not enough. Luckily, I passed the exam adding knowledge gained from work experience and other texts.

Not "advanced", just "more". Does drive home the utility of the selected features in a business context. Does not include the Scenario Manager. Does not have anywhere near all the features: for that, see "Running Microsoft EXCEL 97". Very limited discussion of macros and VBA.

Although "advanced" is in the title, this book is not advanced. A reader will get a lot more features reading Running Microsoft EXCEL 97 and a lot more examples reading EXCEL for Scientists and Engineers. However, if you want to see some EXCEL features put to use in the context of a simplified business, this book delivers. It does cover Pivot Tables and Goal Seek. It does not cover Scenario Manager nor Solver (Running EXCEL covers both, EXCEL for Scientists Etc. only Solver).It covers recording a macro, but not much about VBA (both of the other two books do both). If you want a real discussion of auditing a spreadsheet and structuring it to minimize errors, you will have to read EXCEL 97 Annoyances.In short, this volume is good to illustrate some EXCEL features in a realistic context. It doesn't go into great depth and many items are omitted.