Customer Reviews

Excel 2007 Bible

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I recently acquired this book for purposes of review and recommendation for Office 2007 literature at work.

John Walkenbach has written many books on the subject of Excel. As such, this book is comprised of summaries of several of his other, more specific publications.

Part 1 of the book goes over spreadsheet basics. This includes working with tables, which is a new Excel feature in 2007. You'll find most information pertinent to basic Excel usage in this section, and will be well on your way.

Part 2 is a summary of J.Walk's Excel 2007 formulas book. It includes the same basic chapters - Text, Date/Time, Count/Sum, Lookup, Financial, and two chapters on Array Formulas. If you already have the formulas book, this is completely useless; if you do not, this is a good overview without the extra details.

Part 3 is a short summary of the Excel 2003 charts and graphs, updated for Excel 2007. It also includes a section on working with graphics and the new conditional formatting features of Excel 2007. The information here is not terribly deep, but gives the basics of working with charts and provides some tips for advanced manipulation that is possible. The chapter on conditional is quite short, considering the number of improvements to this feature that has come about with Excel 2007.

Part 4 is a "miscellaneous" section, encompassing various features such as custom number formats, sharing Excel data, and a number of tips/tricks. Again, many of the features described are given an overview rather than an in-depth treatment, but I found that the essential features are all present and accounted for. There is also some information for working in a networked environment and with the Internet.

Part V deals with data analysis, for operations contained on the Data tab of the Excel 2007 ribbon. Most notably, there is a chapter on using MS Query, and two chapters about pivot tables. Part V also covers Goal Seek and Solver, and provides an overview of the tools included with the Analysis ToolPak. This exposes the reader to the features, but does not provide a whole lot of examples, although J.Walk's examples do tend to showcase just how far you can take some of the Excel features.

Finally, Part VI is a (very brief) summary of Excel 2007 Power Programming. It covers custom user-defined worksheet functions, user forms, and workbook events. There is also a number of examples of code that's readily useable in your own projects and Excel-based solutions. This section is enough to get you started, particularly if you have some programming experience, but if you want to get serious with VBA, this will only get your foot in the door.

Overall, this book is perfect for beginners and intermediate users who do not have a lifetime to devote to Excel. Granted, this book is pretty long, but as I mentioned throughout, it's to the point and not excessively verbose. I think of it as an extended tutorial walkthrough of the different Excel functionality. It does not include case studies or exhaustive spreadsheet solution examples. For advanced users, a vast majority of chapters will be unnecessary.

If you like me, having used Excel for years and all of sudden facing the totally overhauled Excel 2007, scrambling to find your familiar functions, and desparately looking for a book to avoid the fancy Excel 2007 slow you down, and you got this book and read it and will feel a bit being let down...

To start with, you won't learn a lot. Chapter 2, What is New in Excel 2007 is the most valuable one.

I am a heavy user of Pivot table so I read Chapter 34 Introducing to Pivot Table and Chapter 35 Analyzing Data with Pivot Table letter by letter. I have learn very little from these two chapters. As I play around Excel 2007, I actually have figured out much more than what the two chapters have covered.

It seems to me that John was in hurry to write up this book rather than taking time to really provide something useful. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of his Excel 2000 Bible and 2003 Bible. I actually own the latter.

If you have any previous Excel bible, arrange a 20 minutes book-store-skim for this book. Everyone is catching up with Excel 2007; you might be a quicker learner yourself.

This is one of THE BEST books on Excel 2007! I've compared this book to the following: Excel 2007 the Missing Manual & Excel 2007 Beyond the Manual. I found that the Bible version to be not only a good overview of the changes in Excel 2007, but also a guide that explores the many uses and possibilities of using the program.

It is well organized, detailed and serves as a good resource for new & intermediate. It is not, however for those who are advanced users who are looking for something on advancing their skills in Pivot Tables, VBA or advanced formulas. If you are looking for a book on intricate formulas or a cookbook, then I recommend Formulas and Functions with Microsoft Office Excel 2007 by Paul McFedries. There are also other books out there geared specifically towards VBA and Pivot Tables.

So, to sum it up, it's an outstanding overview and delve into Excel 2007 that will benefit beginners and intermediate users the most and can help this group grow into power users! It also makes a pretty good refresher for advanced users. Either way, you can't go wrong!

Again an accurate, concise, extensive reference tool for the beginner as well as the advanced user. This is my fourth excel book by Mr. Walkenbach and they are all of equal caliber. They all contain general background information as well as information dealing with other programming areas of excel (so that even if you only purchase a book like the VBA programming guide, you will still learn about macro programming and other general excel functions). Like all his books, this one gives the user a complete library of useful and professional approaches towards working with and solving excel problems. Good Job Mr Walkenbach!

I honestly get a headache everytime I read this book, you can use it for a quick reference if you have very advanced Excel skills. But, IT'S HORRIBLE AS A LEARNING TOOL..The book I'm mentioning below is a little more expensive but at lot easier to follow than the Excel books for half the price. A tip: search for Excel textbooks used to teach in college rather than those manuals at Barnes and Noble or your local bookstore, you will waste your money.
New Perspectives on Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Comprehensive (Paperback)
by June Jamrich Parsons , etc

I teach Excel on a regular basis. My students are all working people who need to be able to use Excel in their jobs. I teach at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. This book makes an excellent text, and each student gets a copy. For each topic I discuss in class, I give them directed reading in this book. It makes a great reference. In some other reviews, I have seen complaints that this book is very difficult to learn Excel from. I can see where that would be true; but, once you have a base of Excel knowledge, this book is very good for building further skills. It is not for the novice who has no other source of learning.

Excel is such a huge topic, that it is impossible to cover it all in one book. As with all other Excel authors, Walkenbach has omitted some things. The most glaring omission is the Subtotal command (not the function). I am continually amazed at the people who have been using Excel for years and don't know about this command. It is not covered in John's book (at least, I haven't been able to find it even with a PDF search), but the subject is covered pretty well in Help and is easy to find there. The other subject I wish he had included was Advanced Filtering. Advanced Filtering is a true workhorse in Excel. Any heavy user of Excel should know how to use it. I feel it is more valuable to the daily user than the intricacies of array formulas. If he had covered those two topics, I would have given him five stars. Regardless, this is a very good book.

This book is for Excel 2007 not the earlier versions. I found this book to have clear and complete coverage of Excel 2007. Very easy to follow information and very complete. Written for beginners to advanced users. AS noted by other reviewers though the print quality is somewhat faded but still very readable. Glad I bought this book.

For the past couple of versions of Excel, I have always used John Walkenbach's books for learning and reference. His books provide quiet a complete reference for Excel users and this book is no exception. This edition contains forty-five chapters covering all aspects of Excel. I pretty much read through the entire book in order to familiarize myself with the latest features of Excel 2007.

This version is a significant upgrade to the previous versions. The biggest change is the ribbon bar. Yes, it is something new to learn, but once you become familiar with this, you will probably find that this really is a much better idea.

Walkenbach covers all aspects of Excel in his books such as:
1. Formulas and functions
2. Charts
3. Graphic objects
4. Advanced features such as data validation, number formats, sharing data, etc.
5. Analyzing data with pivot tables, what-if analysis, goal seeker and solver
6. A whole section (seven chapters) on VBA programming

His book also contains appendixes covering worksheet functions, Excel resources and Excel shortcut keys. Included also with the book is a CD-ROM containing the complete text of the book. But, what I really like about the included CD-ROM are the sample files. Sample files are included for each chapter. You can load them into your Excel directory and access them as you read the chapters and practice what you are learning thereby not just reading but getting hands on experience.

Yes, I know at this point in time, you can now order Office 2010 and Walkenbach has released his book on Excel 2010, but I would say that, based on my experience with Walkenbach's previous versions this review would probably also apply to the 2010 version I'm sure. Of course, many people will not be using Office 2010 for some time to come, such as myself, so I decided to write this review anyway for those who will be using Excel 2007 for the near future.

I love using Excel at home for just about anything I can find using numbers. I enjoy making data bases, charts, graphs, pivot tables, conditional formatting, formulas etc etc. But since Excel does so much I rely on a good book to refer to to answer difficult questions.

With 866 pages this bible covers just about everything from simple introduction to much more difficult over my head information. I had a similar book for an older version of Excel and bought this after I updated to Excel 2007. Some of the help books cover specific areas of Excel, this one covers it all.

As a graduate student I was struggling with trying to use Excel 2003 directions in Excel 2007 program. This bible really has helped me find what I need and I have recommended it to others in my class that were having the same issues.