Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 for Windows

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I have been diligently working my way through this book, but it's been tough going. This book has 15 chapters and Maria did at least cover all the basics of Excel. Alas, that's all the good news.

This book does not have any exercises. You just get generic descriptions of - If you wanted to make a graph, you would click on these buttons and access these features. That's the biggest thing, the writing style is so general and vague. The writing is not hands on or specific. And the style isn't lively; it doesn't pull you in so you want to keep reading. At least the Dummies books I've read have some humor in them and the writing is usually engaging. On the other hand, at least the writing style avoids the convoluted techno-babble I read in an Access book written by a group of people from Microsoft. (Robert Heinlein wrote, "A committee is the only form of life with 28 legs and no brain.")

The book doesn't offer you any data to work with, aside from what you see in the screen captures. So I'm left to make up my own examples, which is extra challenging the first time through using a function or whatever it is.

There are lots of screen captures of spreadsheets, but the text doesn't describe what's happening specifically with the spreadsheets. The text is too general, so it's not helpful in a major way. It doesn't rank up there with books that are full of Excel boot camp exercises. Those are my private thoughts.

Oddly, she hasn't mastered the future or past tense.
From page 171:
I explain how to set the scale for an axis later in this chapter.
I define the three axes on the previous page.

She doesn't know how to say `will explain' or `defined,' ever. The book is rife with these notes and they're always in the present tense. Not a huge deal, but one would think an author and an editor would know how to use the future and past tense.

Out of all the Excel 2003 books I've looked at, the one I like the best is Excel 2003 Personal Trainer. It has exercises that I can do along with the book, well done! And it even has a disk full of sample spreadsheets to experiment upon. And the writing is chatty and alive! When working through chapter after chapter, that is especially welcome.

I have always felt like the Visual Quickstart Guides were the best user guides on the market. This one doesn't disappoint. While the early chapters were for computer users with remedial skills, the book progresses slowly and clearly. It's easy to find what you want. The instructions and illustrations are simple to follow, clear, and well integrated. I've been using it for a couple of years, adding more and more skills to my repetoire as I've needed them, and this guide has never let me down.