Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000

Author - Loren Abdulezer ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from For Dummies was reviewed on 25-Oct-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000 by For Dummies. Anyone who uses Excel on a regular basis will find ways to get more out of the product and to improve their spreadsheets by reading this book.

I found some chapters to be of more interest than others, but that is a function of the type of work that I do. The examples for viewing large data sets were particularly helpful to me. I have long been frustrated at the amount of time that some of my Excel-based reports take to run because they relied heavily on constructs which are computationally intensive. After reading this book, I was inspired to rework a number of those reports using OFFSET as described by the author. That one change alone will save me hours of time staring at the screen watching the recalculation progress indicator. On the other hand, incorporating uncertainty into my models is a once-a-year type of need for me. If you need to (or should) incorporate uncertainty into your models, that chapter will get you started.

Which brings me to the frustrations of the book. In many instances, the author takes an approach of "I am going to make you aware of the possibilty that this can be done rather than show you in detail how to do it." This manifests itself either by directing you to more authoritative external sources in cases like the information on uncertainty or by giving you a very brief overview and then suggesting that you dig into the file on the accompanying CD. Browsing the files on the CD is very helpful. Still, I like to read in lots of situations where I don´t have a PC handy. I would have liked more description in the text and less reliance on the CD.

Finally, this book commits a cardinal sin which is why I rate it only three stars. In order to view the sample spreadsheets, you need to run an installation program that copies them to your hard drive. These files are less than 30 MB, and they shoud be available as uncompressed files in a normal directory on the CD so they can be browsed at will. If you don´t have administrator rights on your PC, you won´t be able to look at the sample spreadsheets unless your IT department comes to run the installation routine. Not to mention that you end up also installing the author´s add-in, which you may not want, and that by default the sample files get installed way down in the programs subdirectory. All of this is particularly irritating since the files are so necessary to getting value out of the text. Which raises a question for the author. Does this constitute a "best practice?" I don´t think so.¤

2) Paperback Book Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000 by For Dummies. Excel Best Practices for Business is one of those rare books that teaches you in depth after you think you have mastered its topic. I am so happy that I bought it because both my husband and I have benefited immensely from the book´s insight and extremely useful information.
My husband is a user who has looked at almost every and bought most new significant books on MS Excel since version 5, and he hardly expected the eye opening learning opportunity he encountered with Loren Abdulezer´s Excel Best Practices for Business. He had successfully completed a number of Excel consulting assignments and had an earned reputation as a user who could make Excel solve a very broad range of difficult problems. Further, he had been blessed with a major gift from his heavy investment of time to master the ability to program Excel when its out-of-the-box capabilities needed to be extended. However, even though he is at the top of his game as an Excel user, reading this book has still been a serious skill-enhancing event.
What I personally find memorable about the book as one whose skills in Excel pale in comparison to my husband´s is that Abdulezer´s book is very useful to people at my end of the skill spectrum as well. If you want to get up and running with Excel skills that will help you improve your productivity on your job or for your business, this book has much to offer. It teaches you street smarts that help you drive Excel to resolve recurring business challenges. Additionally, Abdulezer has the instincts of a coach who forces mastery of the basics upon those of who think they understand and helps to instill more confidence in those who know they do not. Both my husband and I wish these insights had been available to us when we first began with Excel.¤

3) Paperback Book Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000 by For Dummies. book was recieved within 2 days when I didn´t even special ship it. Prime condition.¤

4) Paperback Book Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000 by For Dummies. By changing the cell reference scheme this book requires the reader to completely re-orient in order to understand
Some of the principles might be good ideas but it seems as of each one had to be translated into the row-column appraoch to be appreciated¤

5) Paperback Book Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000 by For Dummies. My background in Excel is pretty weak, but I´m pretty determined to do some really neat stuff in our office with it. I´ve read through the first two chapters and started working some examples and I´m able to understand it with just a little work. It´s written as clearly as could be, taking into account the subject matter. I´m getting pretty excited about what I´ll be able to do. This book seems like it´s just what I need to update some old, broken down workbooks that have been hobbling along for years.

On a side note: when I went to the CD to work some samples, I was unable to install the program on my computer due to restrictions on my work computer. I emailed the address from my book and asked if there was a way to access the Excel files without installing the program. Mr Abduzeler emailed me back and he had set up a web page for me to download the files and also wrote a lengthy explanation on how to use them. I was impressed.

I´ll update this when I get closer to the end of the book.¤

6) Paperback Book Excel Best Practices for Business: Covers Excel 2003, 2002, and 2000 by For Dummies. Spreadsheets have become the de facto standard for communicating business information and the preferred tool for analyzing business data. In this current climate, the accuracy and clarity of spreadsheets are paramount. However, busy managers have little time to sift through heaps of reference books to extrapolate techniques for making polished spreadsheets. Even with finished spreadsheets in hand, managers and business professionals still need a book which holds up a mirror to their real world situations and reflects hidden flaws; and then takes the next step and guides the reader in specific ways to rework these critical documents.

Excel Best Practices for Business enables readers to examine their work and ask critical questions. And once asked, this book also answers with dynamic, practical approaches and provides Take-Aways extrapolated from real situations across a managerial spectrum, making this book more mentor than reference. In this book, a critical need is met.

Book Highlights:

• XML in Microsoft Office Excel 2003: Entirely new to Excel 2003 is major support for XML, making Excel truly web capable and Internet ready. This book provides extensive coverage of these new features from a hands-on perspective. It identifies subtleties, gotchas and problems, and shows you practical solutions and workarounds.
• SPREADSHEET PORTALS: This book introduces the topic of Spreadsheet Portals, which elevates spreadsheet practices for the Internet-ready software to the next level. Aside from explaining the basic concepts and principles of Desktop Client Portals, best practice techniques for building your portal pages and reference implementations are provided. These reference implementations, sample spreadsheets, and online demos are provided on the book´s CD.
• SPREADSHEET MAKEOVERS: What do you do when your manager or boss asks you to take over a complex, spreadsheet-based application and send out reports every two weeks? The person who created the spreadsheet no longer works for the company. Aside from a few emails, there´s no documentation. You look at the spreadsheet and you find it has flaws. Never mind about fixing the old reports; the new ones are going to go out with your name on it. This report is not your prime responsibility. You do not have the time or resources to turn this into a whole project, yet you can´t afford to leave it the way it is. Excel Best Practices for Business provides a step-by-step approach to these "Mission Impossible" situations and walks you through the steps with fully worked out examples.
• ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES: For the first time in a mainstream book, the topic of preparing accessible spreadsheets for individuals with disabilities is addressed. Government agencies needing to make electronic information section 508 compliant and corporations choosing not to alienate communities with special needs will find the techniques presented invaluable. You will learn from a hands-on perspective how to organize and design accessible spreadsheets for the visually impaired that will work with Screen Reader software, how to set up Screen Reader software, and how to build graphical components that will work with Screen Readers. These practices are carried to the next level with the introduction of Assistive Portals. This allows you to make spreadsheets accessible and avoid having to alter your original spreadsheets. The Portal Page does all the work. Because it is table driven, there are no formulas or scripts to modify. Think of how this will change the economics of preparing accessible documents.

There are many more topics in Excel Best Practices For Business including: practical techniques for visualizing hard-to-present data, incorporating "Smart Data" into your spreadsheets, how to build a Data Overpass, quantification of uncertainty, conversion of mountains of legacy data into manageable and useful form, spreadsheet auditing to validate the work of others, a hands-on approach to working with the Excel Solver tool, spreadsheet construction techniques through both simple design and large, complex applications. If you want to find about these and many other techniques covered, then Excel Best Practices for Business is the perfect guide!¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 22-Nov-2008, 076454120X785555869981, 820-5X0-0X0-170-400-0X1-8

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