Rating: 
Summary: Waste of money
Review: This book is a complete waste. Completely unorganized and hard to follow sequences. Examples are poorly structured and hard to understand. Don't buy this.
Rating: 
Summary: A good overview, but not much VBA
Review: This is a good overview of the main features of Excel. I learned a lot about features that are tucked away and hidden in menus that I had never seen before.However, the function examples are a bit lacking. The authors provide overviews of only the most common functions, and even then they lack good examples for most of them. Also, when they get into the Macro/VBA section, they provide only a brief overview without much detail. Also, one of the authors spends an inordinate amount of time showing how to create Gantt charts; This may or may not be what you want. Overall, a good book if you are new to Excel, but you'll need more if you use a lot of functions or macros.
Rating: 
Summary: Follow this book and become Excel Guru
Review: This is a one stop shop for QUICKLY learning and Mastering Excel! The CD-ROM gives you all the example sheets which you can modify and use for your own projects immediately. It has bunch of other resources on the CD_ROM which is GOLD in itself. The only room for improvement is need for more information on VBA.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is by far the most uselful book I've bought this year. I consider myself an above-average user when it comes to Excel, and wanted to get a head start on this new release before my office upgrades. When I purchase a computer book I want something that reads easily, and explains the workings of the software in a coherent way. I'd bought Laurie Ulrich's books in the past and stuck with her for just these reasons. Blattner's chapters read almost as well, and I guess that's why the publishers teamed them up: they know what they're talking about, and know how to explain it. The best thing about this book is you don't need to be a rocket scientist to get something out of it. My wife, who's not a computer person, has been using the book too and feels it's one of the few books that doesn't make her feel inadequate because she's not a "power-user". What more can I say? I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Disorganized and unhelpful
Review: This is one of the most disorganized and unhelpful books I have ever read. Let's say you want to construct a formula. Ghapter 10 is called "Constructing Excel Formulas." Great! But wait: no where in chapter 10 is there a section on actually constructing the formulas. After telling us how to see a sum, it jumps into editing. We haven't even constructed anything to edit! Or let's say you want to hide a column. Look in the index under "hiding" and it tells you to go to page 583. On 583 it says "[y]ou can hide information by using the drilldown technique on PivotTables." How helpful can you be! Actually, on page 582 it gives some more hints: "You can hide [in italics] (page 470) rows or columns that you don't want to show...." And so the reader goes to page 470 to find out how to do this. On page 470 it says "You can maintain a chart's integrity [?] even if you hide [in italics] (page 521) the data.... Ok, the little bugger is on page 521 now, eh. And, indeed, on page 521, we are led full circle: "Of course, because Excel users learn quickly how to hide [in italics] (page 470 [also in italics!]) and unhide (page 583 [?]) cells, hiding provides very little real protection." Fortunately, if Excel users use this book, hiding cells will afford great protection. No one would ever be able to "unhide" them.
Rating:
Summary: When trainers write, everybody wins
Review: This Special Edition Using Excel is the exception to my personal rule that Really Big Computer Books are boring and hard to use. This book is accessible and clear, but doesn't baby you. Having taught myself to use Excel, I had a lot of holes in my own knowledge base, and this book helped me master basic things (like setting up a worksheet, editing my data) and the more advanced stuff I need to do (like setting up pivottables, building macros, and adding Excel objects to other applications). If you have other needs, you'll find them covered in this book. Now about that training ---- I am a big fan of training, and have taken a lot of computer classes, both live and online. I never got around to taking an Excel class, though, but after using this book, I feel like I did take a class. This is probably due to fact that one of the writers (Ulrich) is a trainer. The book starts with basic concepts, to make sure everyone has the foundation topics down and then moves through an impressive spectrum of Excel features, covering most of them thoroughly but not cryptically. I work with technical people and find that they like to impress you with what they know, but don't really care if you "get it" when they show you how to do something. Trainers on the other hand, want to make sure you understand before moving on. You get that feeling from most of the chapters in this book, and in the chapters that assumed more previous experience than I have, the foundation built in the earlier chapters saw me through. I recommend this book to users of all levels, even "newbies" even though these NYC-Phonebook-thick computer books aren't meant for new users. The patient, friendly style is easy to read, but the book won't disappoint even the most powerful of power users.
Rating:
Summary: The real Excel Bible
Review: Using Excel 2000 by Patrick Blattner is probably the most useful book for Excel users. Although this book covers everything from formatting cells to VBA it is especially practical for those who are looking for ideas and guidelines on how to make use of the numerous charting functionalities of Excel. The author introduces methods that combine Excel's interactive elements with graphical functions. Particularly one example about dynamically creating charts was an enormous help. In addition it is shown how to create 3D and even 4D Matrizes by bringing together advanced layout possibilities and Excels mathematical power. Another topic that this book covers is the use of Excel as a planning tool. Patrick Blattner shows how Excel can be used to create GANTT charts that usually can only be created with Software like MS Project. Needless to say that every example mentioned in the book is on CD-Rom as well. 5 Stars for a book that is definitely worth it's money.
Rating:
Summary: Truly a "Special" Edition
Review: With the help of this book and the accompanying CD (worth gold) I have learnt and created tools in Excel that I could not in my entire career earlier. It is clear, easy, up-to-day and a great way to learn and refer to for any Excel work. If you just need one book for Excel from Beginner to Advanced -- this is it! Love this book. I wish I used this book for my business school assignments.
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