Customer Reviews

Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft))

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft))

I have to agree with another reviewer. This book is full of errors including example files that range from already completed or missing pieces. The book is hard to follow because some of the commands are not what is in the actual Excel product. The book lacks symbols or pointers for the keystroke instructions. The book has you making permanent changes and additions to Excel and not removing them. Need I go on.

Yes, I am learning some things the hard and slow way. Maybe this book was printed before the product was released but that is still no excuse for the lack of review before it was printed.

I had purchased the Step-by-Step Powerpoint 2007 book and it was excellent -- great directions, in the left margins small icons for the keys to press, and every example on the CD was correct. And believe it or not the instructions matched the Microsoft product.

I should have read the reviews before I purchased this book. This is my opinion.

Being new to Excel 2007, I figured this book would be the best place to start, given that it's published by Microsoft Press.

I'm about halfway through, and though I have garnered some useful information, I found the book to be so full of errors(and bonehead moments) that it has become a form of entertainment just anticipating the next one.

The first little omen was on page xxiv, where under the Creating and Managing Presentations header, the bullet item "Creating Effective Presentations" appears twice. OK, nobody is perfect.

The very first exercise instructs you to open an existing workbook file, "Exception Summary". The very next instruction is to close the file. This wasn't an error, but it was pretty funny.

There are files and folders missing from the companion CD, missing instructions, instructions that lead you down rabbit holes...

To their credit, Microsoft does maintain an error log on their website, but at least one of the listed "fixes" is still wrong, as far as I can tell.

I wonder if Microsoft Press is hiring proofers...

This book looks good on the surface; However, The descriptions do not match the screens that I have on my version of Excel 2007. It is very difficult to follow and I would not recommend it to anyone new to this software.

I am an expert user of Excel 2003, and I have used many Step-By-Step books in the past which have proven to be helpful. I have only rated this book a 1 since there is not a zero rating. This book should never have been sponsored or released by Microsoft Press.

As indicated by previous raters: the errors are very abundant; the instructions are provided only as tips; and the actual exercises are almost meaningless. After completing the first four chapters of the book, it appears that the only intent of the author is to provide assistance to previous expert users of Excel 2003 on how to navigate the new cryptic menuing system of Excel 2007.

If you are a beginner or intermediate user of Excel, please find another source for learning this product.

Yes, there are errors in this book, but a quick search will bring you to the author's page with a listing of errata. However, this is not the only problem with this book.

First, the examples make very little sense. The reader never knows what she is using for the example. Features that make Excel a powerful program are so poorly written in the exercises that my students at a local community college had no idea what they did after following the steps.

Solver, Goal Seek, and Scenarios are usually features people love when they discover what these can do. However, in this book, it isn't even slightly clear as to what is happening.

Save your time and find another tool to learn Excel (Like the Missing Manual Series). Mr. Frye (the author) should teach a class before he writes a book (and if he has taught, he should read his reviews from students - I can send my students' reviews)

The book is titled "Step by Step" which would lead one to believe that it is designed for the novice user, right? Well the CD practice files that come with it wont even install on my months old Gateway home computer. I've spent half the day troubleshooting this problem with no F#%^$&%$%#! luck thus far.

In my initial browsing of the book at the bookstore, it seemed that it was very thorough with lots of visuals, but I am now thinking that the book just has way, way too much information--pretty much all of it useless for the novice user. Not user friendly in the least.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME!

* full of errors
* Great Topics
* full of errors
* I bought it for the MS Excel CERT/Test
* full of errors
* Cussed out the who so ever(s) that made it full of errors.
* full of errors
* In one of the most complex parts of book of using the Advanced Excel Solver - I spent a hour re-writing the section.
* full of errors
* I will post a updated after taking the MS Excel CERT/Test
* Please Note: full of errors
* Note to Microsoft: Fire everyone who "Green-lighted" the book for print and hire ANYONE else.
* full of errors

The only problem with this new edition is that I can not get the practice files to down load and I can not contact anyone to assist me with this problem. This is very sad because in the past these books have been an excellent teaching tool!

I'll keep this short. I've been using MS Excel in its various flavors for years and have used more than my share of books to update my skills. Of all of the books I have used this one rates as the worst. The large number of errors are unforgivable. The author seems at times to write the steps to the exercises from memory and without benefit of an editorial staff.

For example, there is an exercise using Named Ranges where the author provides an incorrectly named range in a formula and then asks the reader to edit the formula to something equally incorrect. Since there is no check to see if the range will work in a actual formula the reader is led to believe that they could edit formulas in the manner suggested only to find out in the real world (where it matters) that the formulas will not work. This is just one of many mistakes and believe me they are not simply typos.

For those who are totally new to MS Excel this is definately not the book for you. You will not learn how to use Excel. Expert or Power Users should also look elsewhere for an accurate Excel reference. Why spend your time trying to figure out what the author meant to say. Take the time now to search Amazon's ratings for a better Excel reference. You'll be glad that you did.

I am an intermediate Excel user and find it almost impossible to follow the instructions in the book. Some buttons seem not to exist, I just can't find them, so have to give up and move on to the next exercise. Waste of money and time.