Don't Fear the Spreadsheet: A Beginner's Guide to Overcoming Excel's Frustrations

Written in a question-and-answer format, this lowest-level beginner book covers the extreme basics of using spreadsheets in Excel. Instead of delving into advanced topics that scare most Excel novices away, the guide starts at a much more basic level, quickly providing a passable knowledge of the program and allowing users to overcome their fears and frustrations. It answers hundreds of common questions, including Can I delete data from a spreadsheet without changing the formatting? How can I merge two cells, columns, or rows? How do I use text-wrapping? How do I create custom functions? and What is a Macro and how do I go about creating it? Intended for the roughly 40 percent of Excel users who have never even entered a formula, this book will demystify the problems and confusion that prevent them from using the program to its potential.

Tyler Nash is a college student who turned to Bill Jelen for spreadsheet help. She convinced him to compile their question-and-answer sessions into a comprehensive guide for fellow novice Excel users. She lives in St. Augustine, Florida. Bill Jelen is an Excel expert at www.mrexcel.com and the author of numerous books, including Excel Gurus Gone Wild, Pivot Table Data Crunching, and several titles in the Excel for Professionals series. He lives in Akron, Ohio. Kevin Jones has been building applications in too many languages for too many years starting with IBM mainframe Basic Assembly Language. He is known for his ability to use Visual Basic to get Excel to do the most unusual and unexpected things. As “zorvek” he has answered close to 10,000 questions about Excel and Visual Basic on various online forums. NASA wouldn't take him so he spends his free evenings with his daughter Emily at the theater watching 3D superhero films. Kevin is a Microsoft MVP in Excel.
Tom Urtis is owner of Atlas Programming Management (www.atlaspm.com), a Microsoft Office business solutions company specializing in Excel project development and training. Tom also created the Excel Aptitude Test (called XAT, xat.atlaspm.com) to measure Excel skills and know-how. When Tom's not at the computer, he enjoys the outdoor life that California offers, and the diverse cultures of the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives. Tom is a Microsoft MVP in Excel.