Excel 2010: The Missing Manual

by Matthew MacDonald

Excel, the world's most popular spreadsheet program, has the muscle to analyze heaps of data. Beyond basic number-crunching, Excel 2010 has many impressive features that are hard to find, much less master -- especially from online help pages. This Missing Manual clearly explains how everything works with a unique and witty style to help you learn quickly. Navigate with ease. Master Excel's tabbed toolbar and its new backstage view Perform a variety of calculations. Write formulas for rounding numbers, calculating mortgage payments, and more Organize your data. Search, sort, and filter huge amounts of information Illustrate trends. Bring your data to life with charts and graphics -- including miniature charts called Sparklines Examine your data. Summarize information and find hidden patterns with pivot tables and slicers Share your spreadsheets. Use the Excel Web App to collaborate with colleagues online Rescue lost data. Restore old versions of data and find spreadsheets you forgot to save

Genres: Reference, Computers

898 pages, ebook

First published June 15, 2010

About the author

Matthew MacDonald is a science and technology writer with well over a dozen books to his name. He's particularly known for his books about building websites, which include a do-it-from-scratch tutorial (Creating a Website: The Missing Manual), a look at cutting-edge HTML5 (HTML5: The Missing Manual), and a WordPress primer (WordPress: The Missing Manual). He's also written a series of books about programming on and off the Web with .NET, teaches programming at Ryerson University, and is a three-time Microsoft MVP.

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

To give some context, I am an experienced excel user, already comfortable with creating spreadsheets and using the math and statistical formulas. I purchased this book to learn to create charts from tables to facilitate data analysis. I settled down to map the data from my table to a chart, only to discover there are no examples in this book!
From Creating Basic Charts chapter: "Just move inside the table, and the make a selection from the ribbon's Insert->Charts section. Click the subtype you want. Excel inserts a new embedded chart alongside your data"
Really? You can't give me a table with two columns of data and walk me through how to select the data I want, get it on the right axes, and get the title and the legend? Which chart might be best to use for a straightforward example?
The book is filled with vague generalities. If you have never used Excel before, the book is fine for creating an Excel file, selecting, copying, and formatting cells (lots of details on "styling" the look of your page). If you need something more advanced, this is not the book for you. The book has three chapters on charting, so my expectations were that they would have good detail and examples. It doesn't.

[Lisa Weathers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very basic if you are an advanced excel user. The version I downloaded from B&N does not contain a table of contents so unless you want to search 3813 pages for what you are looking for then get the printed version. Very good section on financial functions. I was looking for something to reference statistical functions and did not find it in this manual. This would be very practical for someone looking for financial functions.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best Excel how-to books