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This particular series of instructional books (meaning the "QuickSteps" series) has always been one of my favorites -- they're concisely written in short paragraphs with decent descriptive pictures to help anyone learn just about any type of software application.While I found this book to be fairly complete, I'd still only recommend it as a desk-side reference manual to use along with Microsoft tutorials themselves. While it is a cleverly written book that is not as cumbersome to use as other reference books on the market, it does not address all of the finer points of Excel. All in all, it's a great reference book, and let's face it, sometimes it's just easier to review a chapter a few times to digest material rather than stare at a computer screen until you become cross-eyed. All in all, I'd probably give this book a 4.5, but since that's not an option, I'll have to stick with 4 stars.
I don't use Excel all the time. The text is readable and well organized. But when I do I don't have time to troubleshoot problems. This hands-on, user friendly book has helped me conquer Excel. The visuals are clean and fully support the instructions.I found that you can start from the beginning and teach yourself EXCEL with simple step by step instructions or you can flip straight to your topic of interest and further build your skills. This is a great tool for all levels of expertise.
However, with this book alone, she was able to complete the Excel portion of there thesis without any additional help. I also lent this book to a friend who works in American Ethnic Studies and used Excel to organize and make tables of data for her thesis.
Although my intro. classes had a very brief introduction to the functions I needed, as I progressed into higher level classes and used more and more Excel I found that I needed additional specific instructions for my work.
I'm a soon-to-be-graduating Psychology student at the University of Washington and I am writing this review from the perspective of some one using excel in Social Sciences.I found this book extremely suited to my needs.each step was very clear and precise and it was easy to find the chapter or section that was most applicable to what I was working on.It covered all of the functions of Excel that I have used in my classes thus far. This required quite a few steps and it was helpful to have a guide to look at as I went as opposed to trying to guess what came after the basic skills I had previously learned.
This book was very helpful in that way, and saved me the bother of forever emailing questions to my professor, as I had done before I received the book. I actually used Excel the most to analyze the significance of data from an experiment that I had designed and to graph the results.
The American Ethnic Studies major has no background in science, so was in the position of having absolutely zero knowledge of Excel. From a student's point of view, this is a great resource if your field involves any use of Excel.
It's easy to find what I need when I want it. I am an infrequent Excel user, so I needed a good reference book that is well indexed. That's exactly what I got with Excel 2003 QuickSteps. It's very well illustrated and contains a lot of great tips. The author does an excellent job of explaining the material.
I must say that they have helped my users enormously and relieved my support task. But they are not willing to sit down with a book full of dense text. That is, most users know how to do their specific tasks very well and are willing to learn new things. Thanks to Marty for developing the "Quick Steps" concept and to McGraw-Hill for publishing this series. I tell them to spend a few hours working through the steps, which are easy to follow and can be done at a fairly fast pace. Most people can do that if they have easily accessible references and refresher material like these books.
Steps are outlined in full color with lots of pictures and pointers and tips. I keep a number of these books on hand and when a user requests assistance, I give them one of the books with the appropriate page bookmarked. Additional information is set off in side boxes so users can learn more if they choose. What I have found is that once a user completes a task successfully, they get fairly excited about the experience and browse the book to learn more. I manage a medium-sized network and support a large number of fairly savvy users. I get lots of grumbles when I ask for the book back so I can pass it on to others. This book is also great for new users.
Most users think the full color layout is fun to work through. The down-side is that like any book, space is limited, especially with the fully-illustrated format, so you're obviously not going to find everything in these books, but I do feel they contain a good balance of material and are appropriate for corporate libraries.Marty (the concept author for the Quick Steps series) and I are fellow writers and that is how I learned about these books. And that is where this book excels. This is where the "Quick Steps" books come in handy. Hey, it's the 21st century.
The books really stimulate users to experiment with things they would not normally bother to learn. It is a "browser." Users don't feel like they need to start at the beginning and read through to the end. Anyone working in an office should know how to work with operating systems and common applications.
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