I am in the middle of getting an MBA, and I have a six month internship at one of the top 3 consulting firms in the world. I used to be a chef, so my excel knowledge stopped at simple formulas. I brought the CD-ROM with me to work, and taught myself pivot tables in about 10 minutes with this book. I was amazed at how simple this book made the process. I recommend this to anyone who doesn't just want to be told how to do something, but needs to refernce and practice a skill to truly master it. This truly is a bible for excel use. halleluiah!!

Highly Recommended for those who desire to develop advanced EXCEL skills. I've essentially taught myself using the "Bible" Series.

This book has been a great resource for me over the past few months. In fact my entire team at work now uses this on a daily basis.

I bought this as a reference book for the office after taking an advanced Excel class. Everyone in my office uses it and the power pack that comes on the CD included with the book adds awesome tools and macros to the program. The only drawback is that most of the add-in programs on the CD are only 30-day trials, so you have to pay for them after a month.

I am an Excel novice, and the "Excel Bible - 2003" was a fantastic ready reference book for me. If you plan on doing ANY sort of analytical work on your PC, I highly reccomend using Microsoft Excel. As such, this book will help you successfully navigate through your first few days, weeks, and years of Excel.

Also, Mr. Walkenbach (the author) is very accessable. I had a few basic questions for him regarding Excel formulas, sent him an e-mail and had a response within 48 hours. Pretty remarkable, in my opinion.

I needed a text book that was well written and easy to understand detailing advanced programming for Excel. I looked around for a while before deciding on John Walkenbach's "The Bible".
The information is well laid out and easy to follow.
It comes with a CD Rom with additional information but also includes the book in electronic form.

I am very happy with my selection and will be purchasing other text books from "The Bible" range.

Jeff

Awesome, Easily understood, beginners to experts, Lots of unique ways to make processes easier and simpler. Well worth it!

I had went to an $149 course on Excel and the teacher kept praising this book (they were trying to sell you one on the spot)and it is very useful.
The course owners shot themselves in the foot, though..I was also planning to take an Access course, but instead just bought the Access Bible.
The vendor shipped quickly and the book was in new condition as advertised.

This is a good reference, especially helpful is the CD included. It would be helpful to someone just learning excel, but also goes into some depth of higher level functions.

If your like me and own both Office 2003 and are dabbling in Office 2007, then you want to hold on to this reference for Excel 03 just in case. Like all his books this is an accurate, concise, extensive reference tool for the beginner as well as the advanced user. This is my fourth excel book by Mr. Walkenbach and they are all of equal caliber. They all contain general background information as well as information dealing with other programming areas of excel (so that even if you only purchase a book like the VBA programming guide, you will still learn about macro programming and other general excel functions). Like all his books, this one gives the user a complete library of useful and professional approaches towards working with and solving excel problems. Good Job Mr Walkenbach!

This is my second MS-related Bible purchase and I really do love the series. The Excel Bible gets a little technical and somewhat over my head as a slightly above-average user, but it's really good information. I always shyed away from macros, but it (and a few experts) really helped me write macros for a file that's being distributed company-wide.

Just like a real Bible, I just want to be able to reference it when I need to.

This is my second MS-related Bible purchase and I really do love the series. The Excel Bible gets a little technical and somewhat over my head as a slightly above-average user, but it's really good information. I always shyed away from macros, but it (and a few experts) really helped me write macros for a file that's being distributed company-wide.

Just like a real Bible, I just want to be able to reference it when I need to.

This is a great level 1-2 book, but if you are proficient (not necessarily an expert, but familiar with Pivot Tables, simple formulas (lookups, sumifs, etc), then this is too broad an overview for you. Like other reviews advise, all of the info is available for free on-line elsewhere. When I need to find something, I have been searching the net, because what I call something, may not be what the book calls it, but other people do. Once I find it on-line, then I backtrack into the book with the "official" term and only then can I find it.

On a quick overview, I see this book to be a great asset into the world of Excel. I look forward to using it soon

On a quick overview, I see this book to be a great asset into the world of Excel. I look forward to using it soon

My proficiency level with Excel is not that high, so when I started a new job that required more Excel knowledge than I have, I bought this book based on the positive feedback it received. I have been very pleased with the book. I have not read it cover-to-cover, but it has worked well for what I need, which is mostly just for looking up how to perform specific tasks. For me, the index is the most important part of any technical book. I want to be able to find what I need as quickly as possible, and the index in this book has been great.

This is the most helpful Excel resource I have found. Excellent Index and easy to read explanations.

CD follows the book carefully and precisely....easy instructions and great practice. Book is easy to use for future references for specific skills.

Purchase was easy and came promptly in the mail. Good product. Thank you.

It was in perfect condition. Packaged very well and the CD in the back of the book had never been opened. I saved around $10 and only waited a few extra days for the free shipping. This is the way to go if you have to buy text books! Thanks Amazon!
AGL

This book is a keeper.
It's a very good basic to intermediate level excel guide.
The perfect reference book to help take you to the next level

The book and CD is great. Everytime I have a problem with Excel I can find it in this book. Very helpful

This book, although broad in scope, fails to cover important aspects with enough depth. It is a hefty volume, close to 900 pages, but you would expect to have a lot more information available in such massive space, but most of it is blank spaces and big titles and subtitles. In fact, most of the information available here is available in the Excel help and MS Office support website (free). So, if you are looking for a printed version of Excel's online help, go for it, but if you are trying to find in-depth information and guidance, this is not the book for you.

This book was recommended to me through a seminar I attended. It came highly recommended and I have so far found it very useful.

Very good source of information. I will most likely buy other books in this series.

I meant to buy a VBA and a formula book, but bought the Bible instead. What the heck I thought, I bought it, so I'll read it. I got the books to learn more about VBA programs because I have no experience. It taught me many many neat things about excel even though I've been using excel for more than 5 years and continually show my coworkers how to do their work faster and better in Excel. Now I've been showing people about named ranges and arrays. Oh about that formula book, I haven't even touched it because this was the one I really needed.
The book is written well and even the really complicated portions only took a few read throughs. I have scores of pages dogeared because of all the things that Excel can do that I never knew.

I bought this book to learn more about Excel, and it did just that for me.
You will probably find it lacks depth if you are an advanced power user, but for someone wanting reference or just learning more about Excel this is a good buy.

My confidence in this guide was tarnished somewhat due to the fact that the very first spreadsheet I opened on the accompanying disc (CH 22, "real estate.xls") had an obvious formula error. However, I purchased it as a quick reference guide rather than an full-on instructional guide, so for that purpose it has done the job well. It helps solve those "I know Excel does this task, but I just cannot remember how to tell it what I want!" problems with relative ease and the index has thus far been very detailed and accurate.

This is supposed to be "the" bible on Excell. And it is; it has everything there's to know. BUT, if you need to get your answers fast in order to get your work done, don't buy this book. This book, as well as other "bibles" series, are design with a whole CD program with sample exercises. If you go thru them, step by step, you'll learn your stuff. But, if you just need to get into the topic of getting something done quickly, you will find that their explanation is EXACTLY AS THE HELP FUNCTION ON THE SOFTWARE. And then, the will give you an example from that CD program. Believe me, if you don't want to go thru the whole reading process and just need answers in a need basis, this book won't do it. The same applies to the Access Bible...

The Excel 2003 Bible solved all my problems that even MicroSoft
couldn't help me with. Now I can use the power of some of
Excel's little known features. If I could keep only one book
on computors, it would be the Excel 2003 Bible!

Chock full of examples and a searchable e-book. Excellent value for money.

I am learning EXCEL for reasons of employment, and I use this with an online course provided by my employer, and it's a wonderful reference, easy to follow. NIce to have nearby.

This book sucks! I cannot even believe that the author or publisher can refer to this piece of WHATEVER as a Bible! The first 600 pages only REFERENCE (and by reference, I mean DO NOT describe in any detail that is usable) the basics of Excel that many of us learned in introductory computer classes. I bought this book to learn more about Visual Basic Editor (VBE) and UserForms. Unfortunately, this 'Bible' only recommends another book by the same author devoted to these topics. This was a serious waste of $40!! I honestly think that new users to Excel could benefit from the free Excel tutorials that are offered online or by using one of those books made for 'dummies' that are MUCH cheaper!

Prior to owning this book, I was fairly experienced with Excel, using techniques that I had either taught myself or picked up from friends. I am working as an intern this summer at a big company, and I knew that Excel and I were going to be spending a lot of time together so I decided to get a book to really learn the ins and outs of the program. Well, this book showed me just that; I learned new subtleties for topics I considered basic (formatting, basic formulas, etc.), and things I didn't even know Excel could do (arrays, pivot tables,...). The book does a great job (most of the time) of explaining the the topics presented, and it includes a CD containing example worksheets that you can work through to see exactly what how everything comes together.
One thing that this book does not do comprehensively is VBA, which the author acknowledges. It gives a basic overview of how to write fairly basic macros, but the author has a separate book that really gets into the meat of VBA in Excel.
All in all, a great book, I reference it almost every day at work.

Perhaps I expected too much, but this book is so voluminous that one assumes it should contain all the answers to Excel related questions (as many people believe the books of `Bible' type should :-). On my second try, I was greatly disappointed to find that the only reference on important programming function `ADDRESS' is a one-line definition! So, if you never used Excel before, I guess this book would be a good place to start. Otherwise, continue to search for the true Holly Book elsewhere.

John is a great writer. I have a number of his books in my library.

Unfortunately, he's not keeping up with the product. The primary changes in Excel 2003 (xml, SharePoint integration, InfoPath, etc) are essentially missing from his Book.

Its like he took the Excel 2000 version of his Bible pretty much just changed the cover.

I returned my copy.

The book is really a Bible... A lot of useful information for people that are beginning to use this spreadsheet. I also believe that this book could be a great asset for those who have a good understanding of the tool. It's easier to find a solution in the book's index than looking for it on the help feature of the software. I really have to recommend this book!

I usually avoid books about Microsoft software because I can usually muddle through and figure out what I want to do. If in doubt, I seek out a twelve-year-old who knows the answers. But this week I had a desire to create a unique chart for a client, and decided to see if Excel would help me make the chart. I had the good fortune to run across Excel 2003 Bible at the library, and took it home to skim. Within 45 minutes I had all the answers to my questions, and found a way to create a better chart than I had originally planned to make. That was well worth my time. I'm sure that I would never have found the alternatives on my own that the book pointed me to.

Intrigued by the help I got, I went back and read the simple sections as well. I was impressed by how thorough all of the material is. You are given many different ways to accomplish the same task, along with the pros and cons of why to go one way versus another. I also appreciated the many graphics in the book to show what the screens look like.

The book is also backed up with a CD to run simulations and a web site where you can get more help.

If you think you may ever want to do advanced applications of Excel, I strongly encourage you to read this book. I particularly liked the charting and analysis sections.

As I finished this book, I realized that I usually employ Excel to get tasks done faster . . . and hadn't given much thought to how to complete them better. I suspect that much data could be made more usable and valuable for me and others if I think about how to employ all of Excel's tools in advance.