Excel Annoyances (Paperback)

~ Curt Frye (Author), (Author)
Key Phrases: formula bar, cell reference, refresh data, The Fix, The Annoyance, Cancel Figure (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

It's the solution to almost all of your electronic organization needs. Need to present a detailed expense report? Try an Excel spreadsheet. Keeping track of a complicated budget? Excel to the rescue. Want to keep tabs on your office football pool? You guessed it.

Thanks to its incredible versatility and power, Excel has emerged as more than just a mainstream program; it's now one of the most used applications on the planet. Everyone from run-of-the-mill PC users to leading financial analysts count on Excel to make sense of overflowing data. And to keep up with the overwhelming user demand, three different versions of Excel have hit the market since the debut of Excel 97: Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. Naturally, each version offers a new slate of next-generation upgrades--and, of course, operating bugs!

At last, Excel users have some relief: "Excel Annoyances" emerged from the suggestions of numerous Excel users who've struggled with these irritating bugs over the years. Written in the popular Annoyances format, this latest O'Reilly helper addresses all of the quirks, bugs, inconsistencies, and hidden features found in each of the four versions. Chances are if someone, somewhere, found a certain step confusing, then it's addressed in "Excel Annoyances,"

Author Curtis D. Frye breaks down the cavalcade of information into several tip-of-the-finger categories such as Entering Data, Formatting, Charting, Printing, and more. If you're one of the millions of people who use Excel, you're sure to find a goldmine of helpful nuggets that you can use to fix the program's most annoying traits. In the end, "Excel Annoyances" will help you to truly maximize Excel's seemingly limitlesspotential.

About the Author

Curt Frye is an unusual person. He's a professional comedian as well as the author of several books on Microsoft applications, including Faster Smarter Home Networking, Microsoft Access Version 2002 Plain & Simple, and Microsoft Office XP Step by Step (all from Microsoft Press).

Curtis Frye is the author of Microsoft Excel Version 2002 Step by Step, Microsoft Excel Version 2002 Plain & Simple, several books on Microsoft Access, and Faster Smarter Home Networking. He has also written three online courses for DigitalThink (Excel 2000: Data Formatting and Customization, Excel 2000: Data Analysis and Dissemination, and Advanced Database Design) and ActiveEducation's Introduction to ASP. Before beginning his writing career in 1995, Curt spent four years with the MITRE Corporation as a defense trade analyst and one year as Director of Sales and Marketing for Digital Gateway Systems, an Internet Service Provider. When not writing Curt is a professional improvisational comedian with ComedySportz.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; illustrated edition edition (December 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596007280
• ISBN-13: 978-0596007287
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #627,541 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well organized set of useful hints and pointers, January 14, 2005

By	Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a well organized and written set of useful hints and pointers for Excel. They range from solutions to difficult data analysis issues, to tips about graphing, pivot tables, and importing data from various formats, notably XML.

The book is organized into chapters around central Excel themes; editing, formulas, formatting, charting, etc. Each chapter has a set of annoyances with a description and a solution. These annoyances are sometimes bugs, and sometimes just difficult issues that reasonably advanced users will run into where the help is either insufficient or poorly written. The fixes are generally fairly short and contained within the bounds of Excel, though the book does point to external sites and software where appropriate.

Definitely a must have for the power Excel user.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars stomp the Paperclip, January 27, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ok, Excel is the dominant spreadsheet. No question of that. But it has some surprising "features" which this book calls annoyances. It gives a multitude of them, with fixes for all. (Another O'Reilly series might call these fixes hacks.)

Logically enough, the book starts off with those difficulties that can be met when inputting data. Many of you will applaud that the leading annoyance is the Paperclip, on which much verbal ire has no doubt been expended. So Frye forthrightly shows how to terminate this pesky little bugger.

Later sections talk about formatting, formulae, charting, printing and so on. The chapters essentially follow the main functional structures of Excel. Some features might not be obvious to you; depending on your expertise. But chances are that for the average Excel user, you'll get some good advice from Frye.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More Than I Expected!, January 30, 2007

By	K. J. Evans "jake" (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm always looking for more ways to use Excel - and I hoped this book would help me solve some of the glitches I've come across. But - it's better than that. It offers problems I've never even encountered - and what fun to try and duplicate them! There are so many little tricks that just aren't covered in the usual classes & seminars. Definitely worth having on the shelf - nearby, so you can grab it quickly!