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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Colorful, user friendly, helpful!, October 2, 2007
This review is from: Teach Yourself VISUALLY Excel 2007 (Teach Yourself VISUALLY (Tech)) (Paperback)
One of the newest and brightest features of Microsoft 2007 which includes Excel 2007, is the addition of The Ribbon, which replaces toolbars and menus in previous editions. This is quite complex and not very user friendly, but when you learn it, it can be great! If you struggled with old menu bars, you will definitely struggle with the New Ribbon.
The series of Visual Books has been quite popular, mainly because anything as dry as instructional material is greatly enhanced by pictures. The colorful graphics that define the category of work you want are bright, amusing, informative and large. An example is for the section: protect a password shows a big yellow book with a key lock; or change data color shows paint cans and one color spills onto a worksheet. The computer illiterate can "get the picture" even if you don't know what the book refers to.
However, my grief comes with too many big pictures and not enough pictures of the screen. A most important element is viewing the screen, but each pic of the computer screen is way too small. But you do have explicit instructions in the sidebars.
My question remains, why couldn't the writer incorporate larger-size views of the computer screen. This is so needed, because of the elaborate menu bar...or ribbon as it is called in Excel 2007.
Other than that, one point is the Database section has been advanced from the 2003. This element of the software eliminates the need for ACCESS 2007, which is much more advanced. So, if you don't want to explore the challenging ACCESS, you can simply use the Database function on Excel. This works great for smaller projects.
Overall, this is one of the best books for learning excel. Graphic and text are well spread out, it is user friendly, colorful and includes a ton of help.......Rizzo
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Go From NoWhere to WizWhere Overnight, April 2, 2009
This review is from: Teach Yourself VISUALLY Excel 2007 (Teach Yourself VISUALLY (Tech)) (Paperback)
This may seem odd but I am entrenched in the complexities of the Access 2007 database application and its implementation, but didn't know scratch about Excel 2007. My brother uses Excel to create estimates that are very professional looking for his construction remodeling business. He says Excel is a breeze, but so is everything when you already know how to use it. He came over and gave me a few tips, and I was impressed with how it worked, but I decided an intro book on how to do things was better than having to ask him about every little thing I needed to learn. Based on the reviews I took the plunge. I hesitated at first because there were several comments about the pictures being non-related to learning the subject, and complaints of not enough screen shots. I have to agree with them; NOT. I don't think there are more than a handful of pages in the entire book that doesn't have multiple screen shots in them, complete with bold arrows pointing to the numbered steps in sequence. So with the program running in front of you, there is no mistaking what you have to click on to get it to work.
I am totally in love with the program. Inside of one day I am auto summing columns, editing which cells are included, doing some custom programming on the function bar. This program and book rocks. I am excited about all of the uses I have for Excel. I even am working on a method of downloading my Pay Pal activity in Excel format, and importing that into Access to automate my ordering process. No more oneseys and twoseys processing orders. Now I can download hundreds if need be, and process them all at the same time with a few clicks.
Ok so back to the book. I have the Microsoft Inside Out books on several of the leading software topics. It is an in depth coverage of all of the things you can do with the application. The only problem is that they are explaining things using words based on an understanding you derived from reading earlier chapters in the book.(All 1400 pages) With this teach yourself visually book, you can step into any function, never having read any other part of the book, and instantly learn how to do that. For that reason it makes an excellent reference while you are learning the program; at least until you use it enough, that it becomes second nature.
I wish I had used the Teach Yourself reference books, when I had first started to learn many of the different programs covered in the series. I would have saved myself, days and even weeks of having to trudge through the myriad of details, some of which I didn't need to learn, in order to effectively use the program. I suggest you do the same, and also get an Inside Out book if you are planning to use the program regularly on an in depth level. Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Inside Out Notwithstanding, you can use this TYVisually book to do most everything you need to learn for regular functioning of the program. I have bought dummy books before, and they were beneficial, but I think this TYV book is superior to them because it assumes you don't know anything, and doesn't bother entertaining you with a lot of humor to lighten the load. With TYV there is no load. It's fun learning quickly, easily, and being able to get into what you want to do with the program, rather than what you need to study to begin to use the program. Highly recommended.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Teach Yourself Visually Excel 2007, January 27, 2008
This review is from: Teach Yourself VISUALLY Excel 2007 (Teach Yourself VISUALLY (Tech)) (Paperback)
For those of us who lack computer savvy, a book like this is an essential. Personally I learn much better if I can read text AND look at a picture. Never really having done a spread sheet before, I learned in no time at all. I keep the book right by my computer. I have found all the 'Visually' books to be helpful
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