Customer Reviews

Excel 97 Annoyances (Nutshell Handbooks)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is useful in describing many odds and ends of using EXCEL. This book is not an overall introduction, like Running Microsoft EXCEL 97, nor a series of examples, like EXCEL for Scientists and Engineers. Rather, it is a helpful handholder to assist you in setting up the program and operating it to suit yourself. Like its companion volume, WORD 97 Annoyances, the theme of the book is to put VBA to use in customizing the program to your own tastes. However, the main love of the authors is WORD, and there are fewer VBA fixes in this book than in the WORD 97 book. There also are large scale repetitions of whole sections of the WORD book in this book.

Nonetheless there are a number of useful examples of using VBA in EXCEL, of setting up menus and rearranging toolbars etc. There also are some good points about spreadsheet organization, checking for spreadsheet errors, and precautions to be taken against crashes, viruses, and misuse of macros.

The idea is the same as WORD Annoyances--to provide VBA workarounds to tailor operation to your own tastes. However, not nearly as many workarounds are provided as in the WORD Annoyances book. Also, large sections are copied verbatim. For example, the introductory VBA examples are the same as WORD Annoyances, although there are a few EXCEL specific VBA programs as well. The discussion of worksheet auditing (tracking down mistakes in entries) and organization of worksheets inside a workbook is better than most.

In 1995 I read a book entitled "The Underground Guide to Excel 5.0" by Lee Hudspeth and T.J. Lee. I read it from cover to cover. Since then I have been searching for more from these guy and I finally found it in "Excel 97 Annoyances." Unlike most computer books, which are rehashes of the user manual, "Excel 97 Annoyances" has "soul." It is a funny, irreverent, critical look at Excel. This is a unique book, full of useful tips and techniques. Read it and you'll have more fun learning about Excel than you ever could have imagined.

This book is much like Excel: Brilliant at times and well...annoying at others because it doesn't live up to its potential. Since the authors intent is not to provide an in-depth discussion of all the major features of Excel, beginning users should skip this book. Power spreadsheet users will benefit, but can get the same information from other books that can double as reference sources as well.

50 pages into this book I shut it for good. After reading 8 consecutive pages of whining about what toolbars/buttons/menu items should really be called, I decided that this book wasn't what i thought it would be. I wanted a quick striking, problem solving, excel book that left out the "if we were microsoft, we would have done it this way" jargon that is usually brought on thick by these advanced excel books. Oh well, maybe for you, not for me....