Rating: 
Summary: This book is the best of its class!
Review: In "Using Excel 2000", Patrick Blattner sets new benchmarks for clarity, thoroughness, and progressive teaching of its subject matter. It is actually a joy to read its 1000+ pages. I was probably a low-end intermediate user of Excel when I purchased the book. I started at the beginning of the book to refresh and upgrade my understanding from Excel 97 to Excel 2000. I constantly found myself amazed at what I was learning and there were several times when I actually felt drawn in to reading 20 or 40 more pages than I had originally intended to read at one sitting because I wanted to see what came next. Within the first couple of days of owning this book, I was committed to reading the book cover-to-cover and moving up to becoming a power user of Excel. I have been raving about the quality of Blattner's book to clients, associates and friends and highly recommend it to Excel users of any skill level. For the first time I actually look forward to reading future books by a specific author of books on computing. Patrick Blattner is that caliber of a writer. I also look forward to what he and Que put on their respective book websites to expand my Excel learning experience The CD is a gold mine of Excel Workbooks from the book, and contains many additional resources worth at least the cost of the book. My only disparaging remark is that Que choose to include a .PDF copy of the book on the CD with the copy, past and print functions disabled. A fully functioning .HTML version would have been so much more valuable. I got spoiled reading the .HTML chapters of the book at the mcp.com BetaBooks site before it was published. I used those chapters like I use the hard copy of the book by highlighting text and inserting comments, etc. and I miss capability with the .PDF and will therefore only use it when I am on the road without my hard copy. I am sure Que choose to do what they did out of concern for intellectual property protection but I think their logic is faulty and encourage them to switch formats in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: The most informative Microsoft Excel book of it's kind!
Review: Learn how to apply Excel to your business. Example after example of functions in practice. Learn real world charting techniques. Never before published examples of Project Management features in Excel. Learn how to manage data through OLAP with a PivotTable front end. The most example packed book on the market and all the workbooks are on CD.
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Summary: Unique, complex and very comprehensive guide to Excel
Review: One of the very few books that uses examples to illustrate both how and why you'd do a certain task. Also, often goes the extra mile to present very useful examples rather than just bare-bones ones. Fine extras on the CD as well, particularly the facinating electronic book on Excel Charting, which is by far the best reference I've seen on this area.
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Summary: ...a few words from the co-author...
Review: Que's goal -- and it's clear we achieved it -- was to create a book for the intermediate-to-advanced user that provides the most thorough coverage of Excel available. The result is a book that can be enjoyably read cover to cover, showing you each Excel tool, command, and feature, or as a general encyclopaedic reference used to look up particular topics when needed. As a trainer, I find that it's a great book for the self-taught user -- the features you didn't figure out completely on your own are carefully and clearly described, enabling you to round out your Excel knowledge on everything from formulas to pivot tables and hundreds of topics in between. Our readers will benefit from the broad range of experience brought to the table in this book, and no matter how you use Excel, you'll discover effective tools and techniques in every section.
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Summary: This book should be part of anyone's library who uses Excel.
Review: Special Edition Using Excel 2000 is a must have for any serious Excel user. The authors' employment of over 1000 screen captures attests to the rich "visualness" of this book. "How to" steps for achieving some tasks are simply not laid out numerically; the reader is gently interrupted after some steps, and given a picture of what his/her screen should look like. In addition to the visual illustrations, the authors follow up most tasks with practical everyday examples of where one might utilize a particular skill to expedite Excel usage. As an instructor of Microsoft software, I am always searching for additional instances for applying a particular skill out in the workplace; their examples are invaluable. Many of the book's examples are contained on the accompanying CD, which means they become interactive for the reader. Load these examples onto your computer, and practice the steps outlined in the book.....experiment with other scenarios and check that your outcome mimics that shown in the book. Speaking of the CD, it contains not only the entire book which makes searching electronically very quick and easy, but it also has in essence......another entire book! One of the authors - Patrick Blattner - has included a 388 PowerPoint slide presentation, which takes Excel's chart building capabilities beyond the obvious. All the tricks to massaging a chart into a finished polished product are included in this step by step presentation. I have carefully examined many competitive books covering Excel 2000 and found this edition to be far superior. With its over 1000 pages of instruction, over 1000 figures, tables, and drawings, and extensive use of cross references to lead the reader to previous illustrations or further areas of study......this is the book I take to the classroom and recommend for anyone eager to use Excel to it fullest! Rebecca Marsh - Catapult Instructor
Rating: 
Summary: Well written, concise, clear
Review: Special Edition Using Microsoft Excel 2000 is an excellent training book. Material is presented clearly with appropriate and understandable graphic representations. I was quite disappointed that the CD did not provide the book chapters so that I could study the chapters on my computer.
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Summary: This book sets a new standard for Excel books.
Review: The "Thinking Out Of The Box" chapter is worth the price of the book alone. Amazing business management tools, really helps me to perform analysis in a professional way. Great examples of using functions.
Rating: 
Summary: A real disappointment--information hard to find, incomplete
Review: This book has been a real disappointment. It has two main problems. The first problem is that it's very difficult to locate relevant information--the index is very poorly constructed, and even obvious and common tasks can be hard to track down. For example, I needed to know how to make a data point on a dot plot be hollow. This isn't an unusual task, and it's quite easy, *once you know how.* Good luck finding out how from this book, though. The second problem is that the information provided is often quite sketchy--an unexpected feature in a book that is over 1000 pages long. In the worst case, I found that for a whole class of features that I needed documentation on (Excel's built-in statistical tests), it actually referred me to Excel's help feature. Obviously, if that were adequate, I wouldn't have bought the book! The fact that this book hasn't caused me any actual damage saves it from a one-star review; however, if you need either a tutorial or a comprehensive reference on Excel 2000, this is not the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: A real disappointment--information is often hard to find
Review: This book has been a real disappointment. It has two main problems. The first is that it's very difficult to locate relevant information--the index is very poorly constructed, and even obvious and common tasks can be hard to track down. The second is that the information provided is often quite sketchy--an unexpected feature in a book that is over 1000 pages long. In the worst case, I found that for a feature that I needed documentation on, it actually referred me to Excel's help feature. Obviously, if that were adequate, I wouldn't have bought the book!
Rating:
Summary: A real disappointment--information hard to find, incomplete
Review: This book has been a real disappointment. It has two main problems. The first problem is that it's very difficult to locate relevant information--the index is very poorly constructed, and even obvious and common tasks can be hard to track down. For example, I needed to know how to make a data point on a dot plot be hollow. This isn't an unusual task, and it's quite easy, *once you know how.* Good luck finding out how from this book, though. The second problem is that the information provided is often quite sketchy--an unexpected feature in a book that is over 1000 pages long. In the worst case, I found that for a whole class of features that I needed documentation on (Excel's built-in statistical tests), it actually referred me to Excel's help feature. Obviously, if that were adequate, I wouldn't have bought the book! The fact that this book hasn't caused me any actual damage saves it from a one-star review; however, if you need either a tutorial or a comprehensive reference on Excel 2000, this is not the book for you.
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