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Excel 2010: The Missing Manual
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.
Microsoft Excel’s Top 5 Tricks
1. Page break preview -- In page break preview mode (choose View --> Workbook Views --> Page Break Preview) you can see how your printed worksheet will be split across multiple pages. But even more valuable is the ability to drag a page break to a new place. For example, if you spot some data off to the right side that doesn't fit on your page, you can drag the page break to the right so that it does. When you do this, Excel scales down your entire worksheet to fit the information you want. 2. Recovering unsaved work -- Ever start a new workbook, and then forget to save it when you close Excel in a hurry? Now you can get your lost work back. Just choose File --> Info, click the Manage Versions button, and choose Recover Unsaved Workbooks to find the unsaved spreadsheets that Excel stores automatically. 3. Lookup formulas -- If you understand how to use them, lookup formulas give you a powerful way to copy information from one part of a spreadsheet to another. For example, you can use lookup formulas to create an invoice that automatically inserts the correct product and price information when you type in a product code. Ordinarily, you'd expect this sort of solution to need macros or Visual Basic, but it doesn't. 4. Formula tracing -- Sometimes formulas go wrong, and the result is information that doesn't make sense (or an error code). Excel's formula tracing feature is a big help if this happens in a complex spreadsheet. When you use it, Excel adds arrows that point from the source cells to the formula that uses these cells. Essentially, formula tracing gives you a way to graphically "see" how your formula connects to the rest of your data, and it often helps you find the troublemaking cell that's causing the problem. 5. Charting tricks -- Charts tell a story with your data, and there are plenty of tricks that you can use to make them present that story more clearly and conclusively. For changing a chart's scale, adding an overlay, changing the fill of a specific series, inserting text and graphics directly on the chart surface, and so on, all have a dramatic effect. They make the difference between a chart that conveys a useful insight, and one that's just a bit of spreadsheet decoration.
Microsoft Excel’s Top 5 Tricks
1. Page break preview -- In page break preview mode (choose View --> Workbook Views --> Page Break Preview) you can see how your printed worksheet will be split across multiple pages. But even more valuable is the ability to drag a page break to a new place. For example, if you spot some data off to the right side that doesn't fit on your page, you can drag the page break to the right so that it does. When you do this, Excel scales down your entire worksheet to fit the information you want. 2. Recovering unsaved work -- Ever start a new workbook, and then forget to save it when you close Excel in a hurry? Now you can get your lost work back. Just choose File --> Info, click the Manage Versions button, and choose Recover Unsaved Workbooks to find the unsaved spreadsheets that Excel stores automatically. 3. Lookup formulas -- If you understand how to use them, lookup formulas give you a powerful way to copy information from one part of a spreadsheet to another. For example, you can use lookup formulas to create an invoice that automatically inserts the correct product and price information when you type in a product code. Ordinarily, you'd expect this sort of solution to need macros or Visual Basic, but it doesn't. 4. Formula tracing -- Sometimes formulas go wrong, and the result is information that doesn't make sense (or an error code). Excel's formula tracing feature is a big help if this happens in a complex spreadsheet. When you use it, Excel adds arrows that point from the source cells to the formula that uses these cells. Essentially, formula tracing gives you a way to graphically "see" how your formula connects to the rest of your data, and it often helps you find the troublemaking cell that's causing the problem. 5. Charting tricks -- Charts tell a story with your data, and there are plenty of tricks that you can use to make them present that story more clearly and conclusively. For changing a chart's scale, adding an overlay, changing the fill of a specific series, inserting text and graphics directly on the chart surface, and so on, all have a dramatic effect. They make the difference between a chart that conveys a useful insight, and one that's just a bit of spreadsheet decoration.
894 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 2010
26 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Matthew MacDonald
179 books25 followersMatthew 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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 4, 2013
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.
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.
March 25, 2014
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.
June 18, 2013
One of the best Excel how-to books
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews