| Brilliant Excel 2010 |
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Author: Steve Johnson Does this spreadsheeting title live up to its claim to be "brilliant"? Author: Steve Johnson This is book that has evolved through previous generations but this is the first time I've looked at it and my first impressions were good. "Brilliant" in the title refers to the fact that it uses full color - as well as alluding to the quality of the content. The color certainly helps the reader to navigate the content. For example, you can quickly turn to a chapter you are interested in by noting the color of its marginal tab. However, while displaying the screendumps in full color is certainly an advantage their size and resolution means that you cannot see the detail in a full screen image and this is a definite shortcoming. This isn't a book to read - it is a reference to dip into when you need help. And in this role it is particularly useful to someone familiar with a previous version of Excel who wants to get the most out of Excel 2010. I have confessed elsewhere that, having stuck with Excel 2003 until a few months ago, I found the move to Excel 2010 something of a shock and this book is certainly helpful to someone in my position. There are very useful New! flags on the contents pages and in all the sections referring to the newly introduced features which point out the very latest enhancements in Excel 2010. While they don't cover features upgraded in Excel 2007, Chapter 1 has a helpful page on Using the Ribbon, which is almost enough to explain the very different interface. The use throughout the book of "Did You Know" boxouts and "Timesaver" and "Trouble" sections draws attention to tips, fixes and points that even an experienced Excel user might have overlooked
The book takes a logical approach. Chapter 1: Getting Started with Excel covers the various aspects of the interface - commands, toolbars, dialog boxes and so on including moving around and switching views. Then Chapter 2: Basic Workbook Skills goes through selecting cells, entering and editing labels, text and values and covers autofill and spelling. Chapter 3: Working with Formulas and Functions is pretty fast paced. Having looked at creating a simple formula it introduces the ideas of relative and absolute cell references and then naming cells and ranges. Later in the chapter we encounter circular references and nested functions. Chapter 4: Modifying Worksheets and Workbooks helps you get to grips with the structure of workbooks starting with inserting, deleting, moving and copying worksheets, hiding and unhiding them, going on through operations on rows and columns and concluding with Custom Views and Workspace Layout. Chapter 5:Formatting a Worksheet quickly moves from the basics to conditional formatting and the newly introduced sparkline formatting then coves the use of color and Office 2010's new themes and styles. Next Chapter 6: Viewing and Printing Worksheets and Workbooks not only covers margins, headers and footers and page breaks but also the new Print screen features in the File tab and creatin a PDF document and an XPS document are in this chapter. Now we've arrived at the end of the book we come to a Workshops section for which files are provided on www.perspection.com but the five projects are advanced and go beyond normal spreadsheet activities:
Another aspect of this book is that prepares you for the Microsoft Certified Applications Specialist - but again you need to use it in conjunction with the website which will provide the MCAS objective and refer you to the specific pages in the book that cover them. But it isn't a book I would recommend to a complete beginner as you need familiarity with the basics of Excel in order to appreciate the "brilliance" of the book and get the best from it.
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 05 June 2011 ) |