Excelling in Life

Do you need to learn Microsoft® Excel®, but don't know where to start? Do you visualize Excel® as a giant, wild monster with too many commands and complicated functions? Have you searched for concise instructional books, only to find manuals thick enough to hold a door open? If so, Excelling in Life is for you. It was written to fulfill a widespread necessity: the author is a university instructor tired of seeing professionals waste time and having to teach Excel® to undergraduates to complete assignments in non-computer courses such as Geography or Business Planning. There is no beating around the bush with Excelling in Life; its mission is to turn you into a spreadsheet genius through hands-on, practical exercises carefully selected to satisfy most of the needs of typical students, professionals and business owners.

Excelling in Life was carefully designed, word by word, to turn an Excel^® illiterate into an advanced user. The book is unique because it is written with a humorous and candid style with user-friendly color coding and cute images, but at the same time goes deep into teaching what many other publications avoid: how to open the doors to complex programming with a combination of built-in functions. In other words, it reduces terrifying, fire-breathing formulas to mewling kittens you want to play with. And all of this will happen with under 100 effective pages of hands-on step-by-step instructions. The topics and examples in the book, carefully selected after a decade of experience in business and teaching, include: basic program operation; key formulas and functions (date & time, text, logical, math, and lookup & reference); creating eye-catching and functional charts; the magic of pivot tables and pivot charts; producing error-proof files with data validation, formulas and cell protection; advanced features and basic macros; and optional statistical analysis procedures. More than a mere collection of tricks, Excelling in Life presents an original and comprehensive Best Practices approach with the key commandments of proper spreadsheet use. Using real-life examples and a style that is as entertaining as it is educational, Excelling in Life will guide you toward a deep understanding of the most popular and timeless spreadsheet application in the world. All of us —farmers, students, sociologists, engineers, dentists, stay-at-home dads, CEOs and even some smart pets— desperately need more skills with this lovely program, whether we realize it or not.

Andrés Varhola is an Ecuadorian, Canadian and Slovak Forest Engineer, PhD, university instructor, writer and decent karaoke singer. He was born and raised 2,850 m (9,350 ft) above sea level in Quito, Ecuador, and lived for five years in rainy Valdivia, Chile, while he completed his undergraduate degree. He worked in the Ecuadorian forest industry before marrying and eventually moved with his wife Alejandra to Vancouver, Canada, where he earned a doctoral degree from the University of British Columbia. He dedicated long nights to writing the precursor to Excelling in Life as teaching material for a university computer course. His ambition is to see all high school graduates dominate Microsoft^® Excel^® and learn to incorporate it into every aspect of their lives.