Head First Excel

You'll learn how to:

• Organize and present information clearly in a spreadsheet
• Make calculations across a number of worksheets
• Change your point of view with sorting, zooming, and filtering
• Manipulate numerical and data to extract and use the data you need
• Leverage Excel as a grid-based layout program
• Get the most out of writing the right formulas for the right functionality
• Nest formulas for more complex operations
• Create sophisticated data visualizations with charts and graphs
• Use Goal Seek to optimize possible outcomes based on different assumptions
• Create summaries from large data sets for exploratory data analysis with PivotTables

What you need for this book

This is a learning experience, not a reference book. We deliberately stripped out everything that might get in the way of learning whatever it is we’re working on at that point in the book. And the first time through, you need to begin at the beginning, because the book makes assumptions about what you’ve already seen and learned.

Excel mastery is about rocking out with formulas.

A lot of books on Excel are little more than fancy restatements of the help files that give as much weight to formulas as they do to all of Excel’s other features. The thing is, the people who are the most skillful users of Excel are the ones who really, really know formulas. So this book was written to have you constantly using and learning new functions to make your formulas powerful.

This book uses Excel 2007 for Windows, but you can use other versions of Excel.

Excel 2007 for Windows was notable for its major user interface redesign, but it also included features like structured references that are really useful. So useful, in fact, that some of those features made it into Head First Excel, even though not everyone has upgraded yet. But even if you haven’t upgraded, don’t sweat it: you can just skip over those sections and not have too much trouble, because...

Most of the important stuff you need to know about Excel has been in the software for years.

There are some formulas and features that are new to Excel 2007 and 2010, but the basics of formulas are old school. So don’t sweat it if you’re not ready to drop the cash to upgrade (although you should eventually).

Excel 2008 for Mac doesn’t have all the features of Excel 2007 for Windows.

You’d think that the 2008 software would have everything the 2007 software has and more, right? Well, not really. While Excel 2008 for Mac came out after Excel 2007 for Windows, there’s still spotty support for some of the new Excel 2007 features. It’ll all get ironed out in future versions of Excel for Mac, we’re sure!

You can download data in both .xlsx and .xls format.

In this book there are a lot of situations where you’ll need to download data in order to do the exercise. Suppose you’re using an early version of Excel that doesn’t read the newer .xlsx file format that’s used most frequently in Head First Excel. It’s no problem: just download the file using the .xls extension. Both versions of the files are on the O’Reilly website, but remember that a lot of the newer Excel features will be absent from the .xls versions.

The activities are NOT optional.

The exercises and activities are not add-ons; they’re part of the core content of the book. Some of them are to help with memory, some are for understanding, and some will help you apply what you’ve learned. Don’t skip the exercises. The crossword puzzles are the only thing you don’t have to do, but they’re good for giving your brain a chance to think about the words and terms you’ve been learning in a different context.

The redundancy is intentional and important.

One distinct difference in a Head First book is that we want you to really get it. And we want you to finish the book remembering what you’ve learned. Most reference books don’t have retention and recall as a goal, but this book is about learning, so you’ll see some of the same concepts come up more than once.

The book doesn’t end here.

We love it when you can find fun and useful extra stuff on book companion sites. You’ll find extra stuff on networking at the following URL: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfexcel/

The Brain Power exercises don’t have answers.

For some of them, there is no right answer, and for others, part of the learning experience of the Brain Power activities is for you to decide if and when your answers are right. In some of the Brain Power exercises, you will find hints to point you in the right direction.