Customer Reviews

Excel for Dummies

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

 

 

I recently had to use Excel in a way that I had never done before. Sometimes the "help" feature on Excel doesn't seem to help very much, so I decided to borrow this book from the library so I could look up my questions as I did the new tasks.

What I discovered first was that the index isn't very complete. Some of the answers I needed could be found by using the index, but most of them required me to read the book from front to back. When I checked to see if the sections I needed were in the index, I found they were not.

The second problem I had was that the terms used in the text were hard to track down, so even if a section was easy to find from the index some of the information was unintelligible to me.

So I went back and read the whole book, and followed it quite easily.

I didn't like the examples too much. They were pretty juvenile.

I then compared this book to the Excel Bible which I had used recently for a similar purpose. I found the Excel Bible was much easier to use for reference, contained a lot more information, spelled out more ways to get the same tasks done and wasn't sound bound up in terminology.

If you want to get past doing only very simple tasks on Excel, you should plan to graduate to the Excel Bible. If you are confidence that you can read and understand new subjects, you can probably start with that book.

I have some experience and picked through the book for things I did not know about. A lady that I work with is a true beginner and is learning a lot from the book. It is an older version than I planned to buy and some of the menu's are not exactly the same. All in all, great for a beginner, and not too bad for someone with a little experience.

This book is not indexed. It is apparently meant to be taken as a course from start to finish. Otherwise, logical organization is lacking if one wishes to look up how to do a certain thing.

If you have no experience with any computer spreadsheet program, you might like the book. It gets you started. But, be aware you will need to set aside some time and proceed from cover to cover.

If you have experience with any computer spreadsheet, I advise you try another book and author.

I have used this book primarily as a reference tool and it works well for those new to excel

I haven't completley finished the manual, but so far I have really enjoyed it. It is written in a language that is easy to understand and it doesn't get overly technical.

Well worth the purchase price.

This book was purchased for my mother as a christmas gift. She is always calling me asking "how do you do this or that" so I decided that I would see if this book would help her at all. I have used other "FOR DUMMIES" books and found them helpful.

A good starter for those who have never used excel. Much better than microsoft excel help.

I ordered four books, Excel for Dummies, Power Point for Dummies, Bookkeeping for dummies, and Bookkeeping work book for dummies. They are wonderful, easier reading books and was all sent promply. I was very impressed. Thank you so much and I am sure I will be ordering again.

Carol Weis