Best spreadheet books according to redditors

Also, Excel MVP Michael ("ExcelIsFun") Girvin has written Ctrl+Shift+Enter: Mastering Excel Array Formulas

Ah, la vecchia tattica del "quello che lavorava qui prima di me faceva tutto a mano?"

E adesso vado sul pesante, anche Ctrl+Shift+Enter? Se sì, sei il mio mito. ;)

http://www.amazon.com/Ctrl-Shift-Enter-Efficient-Calculating/dp/1615470077

Okay, I came across this trick while reading Excel Gurus Gone Wild. Great book written by Mr Excel,with some neat solutions to some challenging Excel issues. Anyway, a question I routinely see asked (and apparently is routinely asked in the Mr. Excel Forums) is how do I get the interior color or can I conditionally format based on color. This trick uses an arcane function, that can't be used in a regular cell based formula, but can be used in the Named Formula (or Name Manager) box. /u/takin_it_sleazy threw up some great code the other day for pulling it in via a custom UDF in VBA, found here. Anyway, I know many people try to avoid VBA for a variety of reasons, and so I thought this was a cool approach. Don't know how well it works, it may be buggy, but I did get it to work when I tried, as shown in the GIF. The named formula = GET.CELL(63,INDIRECT("RC",0)) The 63 references the interior cell fill color. The Indirect("RC",0) basically tells Excel to look in the same cell the formula is in, which works well for conditional formatting. For some reason, I think this may mute the color codes to either one of the older version of Excel's limitations, so 65 or 256, if memory serves. I just added the 4 cells with the GetFillColor formula to see what the codes the function picked up were. Note that the GET.CELL function returns a whole ton of info about the cell, hard to find on the web, but I did find it here. Obviously, it would be great to be able to use these without creating the named formulas, but it doesn't seem to be possible. Anyway, I thought it was cool enough that you might be interested to see it, give it a try. Good luck.

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Excel-Expert-Skills-Method/dp/1909253073

During my undergrad I had an entire class dedicated to Excel and intro to SAP. We used the textbook cover to cover. It teaches you everything and each lesson covers only 2 pages making it very easy to work through. All the files can be downloaded online for free. Couldn't recommend any higher.

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I would recommend that you do it the old fashioned way. Pick up a good book on the subject. In my opinion, a good book will be generally be far more thorough going than a video tutorial and have good examples that you can really study. The one by Bill Jelen (Mr. Excel) is excellent: Microsoft Excel 2019 VBA and Macros

If you are completely new to programming, don't worry, it's definitely not as hard as people believe it is.

The first important thing when you are learning any programming language is to be goal oriented, because this is what is going to keep you engaged and make you more likely to actually gain something from anything you read.

Think of the most tedious and repetitive task that can save you some time - that is going to be your best place to start. For instance, some formatting always has to be updated and it's time consuming, or you need to create a letter from information on a speadsheet every day etc. That's where you'll see your work pay off immediately, and that rush of having it work for you every day will really inspire you to keep going. For me, it was taking a bunch of files and porting the information to one place initially.

Once you know what your end goal is and what you want it to do, google it in every variation you can find. YouTube tutorials are actually where I started, just to see if what I was thinking of was possible. They have a lot of great resources for how to do certain things and you can find out if the concept is achievable this way really easily. Try to "steal" code or try examples that you find. (Just put a url in a comment or some indicator of where you found it from because you will forget later, and having the page it came from can significantly help when you are troubleshooting. This is attribution etiquette for programming, anyway.) Don't get discouraged if the code doesn’t work the way you imagined, this is going to allow you to see why it behaved the way it did later on and is a really important step to learning how things worked. Besides, with anything you do, you will likely have to mold it so much to your project, it will end up being more your work than anyone else's in the end either way.

[Wise Owl Tutorials] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHO5NIcZAc4&list=PLNIs-AWhQzckr8Dgmgb3akx_gFMnpxTN5) are some of the most thorough and logically laid out tutorials I have seen for VBA and I heartily recommend this if you learn better through video - he's pretty much made a full course of it.

Then, I would say dive in and find out how the language itself works for a little bit. Read about variables, if statements (and variations of these), and loops.

Variables are the placeholders for your data, and using the right ones in VBA means that you can make your program run faster or slower, so it definitely helps to get an understanding of these and what they do early.

If statements and operators and their variations are the parameters that determine what happens. (If dog does not = fed, then feed dog.) These are the logic that everything runs on. You would be surprised how much coding comes down to statements like the dog example.

Loops are how your program is able to do a few things to a large data set in very little time in a structured way. (For each dog, if dog is not fed, then feed dog, then move onto the next dog.) These are also ubiquitous in all programming languages, but the syntax varies between language. This is how those if statements become really powerful.

If you are like me, and learn well from books, these two have been the best ones I've found:

[Excel 2016 Power Programming with VBA (Mr. Spreadsheet's Bookshelf)] (https://www.amazon.com/Excel-Power-Programming-Spreadsheets-Bookshelf/dp/1119067723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539050489&sr=8-1&keywords=john+walkenbach+excel+2016+vba)
This book is great for learning from the very beginning, especially if you don't have any previous programming knowledge. It will walk you through everything in a very easy to read way and get you dreaming about the possibilities with VBA. It also shows you why you may end up wanting to get detailed in the ways you think about variables etc with timed examples. I used the 2013 edition of this book and I was very pleased. This is a great choice as your first book covering the basics.

Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 2016:
This book is the one I used the most out of all of the books that I bought on the subject. It has some really excellent examples of things you may not have even imagined could be done in VBA that give the language a lot of power and usefulness. I still refer to it, even though I outgrew all of my other books. It spells out a lot of the basics as well, and if I had to refer to VBA on a desert island, this would be the only book I would bring. (Although the idea of having to refer to VBA on a desert island is a special kind of nightmare, even for someone like me who loves it.)

If you can only afford one of these, definitely get this one - the first one is great for baby steps but becomes outgrown quickly. I recommend it mostly because it does an excellent job of explaining programming if you have never done it before.

The Spreadsheet Guru has some really basic things ranging to some more advanced concepts and is not a bad place to start learning some quick fixes.

Excel Macro Mastery is great for getting to know how the moving parts work, especially with some of the complex data types that it can be a little hard to wrap your head around as a newcomer. This site has some times when it will try to sell you on his program, but it's worth a little annoyance for the truly good advice:

Excel Virtuoso is excellent for advanced program structures and how to make VBA act more like an object oriented programming language. It may be good for some of the earlier stuff, but this is when I found ways to do things that most people don't seem to know it can, including ways to make custom classes for data do things that are not very well known and only glossed over in most VBA programming books. It's been a godsend for me, and is the cornerstone that a lot of my work actually hinges on as the project I took on was far more complex than the scope of most macros, which are quick and simple maneuvers primarily.

But don't limit yourself to these resources. Look everywhere when you are trying to learn and don't fret overly with whether you are doing something right or wrong. Make it, test it, troubleshoot it, and improve.

The computer will not explode if you do something wrong. VBA is meant to be like a fisher price language because the intent of providing it is more for office workers than full blown programmers. At worst, your program will shut down and you may have to end the task in task manager or reboot your computer. This is rare. Most times, the compiler will remind you that you missed some part of syntax, which is a quick and easy fix that even advanced programmers have to deal with all of the time.

Feel free to look at places like stack overflow, but take all of this advice with a grain of salt, because there are normally at least 20 ways to do something (and that is on the low end) and everyone can get a little protective of their way. I use this as more of a brainstorming effort.

And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to you. If I haven't dealt with it already, I may be able to point you in the right direction. :)

Also, if you're interested in learning programming in general, this is an awesome list of coding courses and where to find free coding courses that freecodecamp sent out this summer:
https://medium.freecodecamp.org/500-free-online-programming-computer-science-courses-you-can-start-in-august-bc1bcac1af5e

Io avevo imparato su questo

Start right here:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/topic.aspx

And buy this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Excel-Power-Programming-Spreadsheets-Bookshelf/dp/1119067723

I personally like Learning Tableau as a great primer and refresher on understanding how Tableau works: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Tableau-Visualization-Business-Intelligence/dp/1784391166 -- follow along with the book where you can.

If you haven't already walk through the videos here: http://www.tableau.com/learn/training -- and by walk-through I mean use Tableau and follow along.

Visualisation in general I need to do more reading but I like:
Stephen Few : Show me the Numbers http://www.amazon.com/Show-Me-Numbers-Designing-Enlighten/dp/0970601972
Accidental Analyst: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1477432264/

There's a few more books recommended here: http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2013/7/list-books-about-data-visualisation-24182

edit: and for blogs I currently like http://flowingdata.com/

Working in IT for 15 years, I've found the cheapest way to do something really is to just go to a book store and buy a book. Check out this one. I haven't used it but looking at the ToC it covers quite a bit and it's only 30 bucks.

If you're working in consulting - see if you can find whether your firm has any classes taught by Training the Street. Most efficient course I've ever taken as an excel guru.

I started on my own however with this book: Excel 2010 Bible. I know it's not a video course but absolutely amazing for the medium.

Finally, as someone who actually teaches excel for my firm, the one thing I always break curriculum to show off are form control buttons. There's a great little starter here. They require 0 VBA yet put one of these puppies on a graph's source data and you have an interactive workbook that will blow a partner's pants off.

Good luck!

This might help:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Excel-Power-Programming-Spreadsheet%E2%80%B2s-Bookshelf/dp/1119067723/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1527765923&sr=8-3&keywords=excel+vba

But what you really want to do is copy the data into a fresh book so you can play with it, start by looking into pivot tables:

https://www.excel-easy.com/data-analysis/pivot-tables.html

Pivot tables should solve your problem once understand them. If not then move on to more advance formulas and feature combinations. Before finally tackling VBA (actual ms office programming), use VBA only if literally no provided feature(s) can be used to solve your issue.

Also as an accountant, do your career a favor and make sure that you master excel by practicing in your spare time. Mastering excel at home really helped me break into the fin-tech world, now I am a full time full stack developer. Excel can be used to do almost anything with some creativity. Good luck mate! let us know how you do

These are the best books that I've used: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Excel-Essential-Skills-Method/dp/1909253065 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-Excel-Expert-Skills-Method/dp/1909253073

Completing both will take you from zero to 99th percentile of Excel users in terms of skill.

Excel Bible is worthless for learning - it's basically an Excel bult-in help (which is excellent) turned into an overpriced and cumbersome book.

I really liked Excel Dashboards and Reports by Michael Alexander and John Walkenbach. I have a little Excel library at my desk and every time I reach for that one I have to track it down because it keeps getting borrowed.

Maybe for basic stuff. You can do a ton of stuff with PivotTables that most people don't know about. Whole books have been written on just using PivotTables for example, like this one

The hardest of these for me is the lookup functions but everything else is fairly easy.

If you don't mind spending some money this is the book I used for my MIS class. It has step by step tutorials are explains everything so that if you follow it, it should all work. My least favorite part about excel is that it's not very forgiving if you screw something up.

http://www.amazon.com/Perspectives-Microsoft-Excel-2010-Comprehensive/dp/0538742917

Rob Collie and Bill Jelen's books basically cover the entire thing and are very approachable (they're basically written for Excel power users):

PowerPivot and PowerBI

PowerPivot Alchemy

I would recommend checking out Learn Excel 2007 through Excel 2010 From MrExcel by Bill Jelen. It is based on common questions from the Mr. Excel website and gives you lots of practical examples, plus sample spreadsheets based on these examples.

I cannot recommend this book enough for someone starting out with Pivot Tables.

Do you have any basic programming background? If not, then you might really want to start off with Excel first. I'm a big fan of Bill Jelen, and you should definately start with this book

until he gets copies of this

https://www.amazon.com/Developing-Microsoft-Solutions-Visual-Applications/dp/1556158939

Take a look at this link, gives you a guide on how to use VBA to create a pivot table. I can walk you through any steps you are not sure about if you wish.

I also found this beginners guide for anyone looking to learn to use pivot tables.
The Ultimate Guide to Excel Pivot Tables by Ed Caldwell

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guide-Excel-Pivot-Tables-ebook/dp/B01GKPXGCW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494516070&sr=8-1&keywords=Ultimate+guide+to+excel+pivot+tables

It's designed so you could hand it to someone who's never used excel and to take them up to having a grasp on VBA and some advanced formulas like array formulas. I haven't picked it up in about a year it doesn't sound like it would be a massive learning jump for yourself.

When it comes to charts/reports etc there are actually 2 books that I'm still deciding if I should buy or not. Both have been recomended to myself but I'm waiting until payday before buying them myself so can't testify to how good they actually are.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1118519655/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=26FRQZR9FPSJT&coliid=I2TLB44KQWBWAS

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1118490428/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=26FRQZR9FPSJT&coliid=I3LYA71RKLXI19

VBA is rather archaic and you manipulate excel through poorly documented com methods/objects and it sucks. If you really want to go that route here is a link to try. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff846392.aspx

VBA is also strictly distinct and not entirely compatible with Visual Basic. If you're entirely sure you want to go this route there are books on the subject. Try the Excel Bible. It has sections in there on VBA. Only 100 or so pages however. Excel 2016 Power Programming with VBA is about 700 pages of VBA

I'd ask about marriage counseling and see if he is willing to talk about it. Given your financial situation, he'd get financially clobbered too in a divorce because it sounds like he'd have to pay child support and spousal support. Even if he's emotionally distant, I guarantee having to write a several thousand dollar check for the priviledge of his children living somewhere else would jolt him awake.

The other thing I'd do is focus on your other problem. You feel trapped because you don't have any skills and don't feel employable. That's keeping you from making decisions because you feel like certain options aren't on the table.

What I recommend for everyone in your situation is to learn some skills. That doesn't necessarily mean earning a college degree. What I'd do if I were you is buy a book like The Excel Bible (http://www.amazon.com/Excel-2016-Bible-John-Walkenbach/dp/1119067510). Go through it page by page and do all the exercise. Then do the Word Bible. Do you know how wretched the state of support staff is in this US? We can't call them secretaries anymore, but they suck. Most of them are morons who can barely send emails. Do you know that most professionals would KILL to have an admin support person who could fix all their spreadsheets or powerpoints? I guarantee you could get a job and parlay that into something better pretty fast. Then you'd have some income, some skills and some better options.

The ____ for Dummies guides are always a good place, but if you want to get serious into understanding Excel you might just want to get the appropriate text book. That way if you want you can use it to get Microsoft Certification for it.

Here's some: It depends on which version of Microsoft Office you have:

• Textbook 1
  
  
• Textbook 2
  
  
• Textbook 3
  
  
• Dummy's Book 1
  
  
• Dummy's Book 2
  
  
• Dummy's Book 3
  
  Microsoft even offers some basic training courses by itself

Kindle Price: $4.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079QN3XYS