John said
This is a great book with deep examples, if you are looking for a Master Chart level it is a rigth place.
The book have a complete methodology that help you to reeply this concepts in a lot professional Projects.
but if you want increase you excel skills you need to invest time because is not a dummies book.
I am applying this methology in real cases with awesone result.
in a few words this book in more sofisthicated than books MR excel or John Walkenbach
Just imagin
Vaslo said
I won't be redundant in the restatement of J. Peterson's review. I think he nailed it for the most part in a very tactful way. I just want people to be clear if they haven't read his review:
Pros: The book is really nicely laid out in terms of color and style. Alot of the ideas are very interesting and not things that most people would be able to do on their own, or even conceive. Some of these ideas are great for presentations or trying to keep the pretty stuff in the foreground while your data hides in the back until you need it. The chapters have a wealth of information and you can learn the extremes of Excel charting including some of the more aesthetic things that are hard to teach.
Cons: As Peterson said, the author uses some extremely cumbersome methodology for naming and arranging his workbooks. So much so, that he had to include an extra 26 pages of reading on the cd just to understand this system. The worst part? Its not even a common methodology. Its something he created based on an old methodolgy and I can't even find anything on the net about it. When you read about it, he makes you believe its some kind of standard, but really its only standard to him and some people who read his book. He also makes it sound like its a great device for users of your book to understand the setup, but NO ONE you give your workbook to will know anything about this methodology. Let me be clear that this is a decent methodology, but for 99% of readers, its just too cumbersome if you just present a few big projects a year or want some flashy consulting presentations. The learning of charts should not be dependant on this narrowly used methodology.
Also, as Peterson stated, the author kind of drifts into philosophies and discussions that are superfluous to the subject at hand, including long winded discussions about his opinions on uses of rarely used tools in excel. Its merely his personal philosophies, and though some are good rules of thumb, they should be written elsewhere while the main gists are covered for the 99% who would read this book. It mentions something about translation from German, so maybe that's why some areas are overly written. BUT the ideas had to come from somewhere, the language just doesn't create them!!
Its a good book, but check it out at your local library before you buy it, its just not for everyone.
Juan De La Henson said
This book exeded my expectations, I do recomend it.
This book still remains with a CD which is extreemly practical to follow on its contents, too bad other books have dropped this practice to save some cents. again congratulations to the author.
Lynedon A. Van Ness said
This book is good, but quite complicated if you are not an experienced Excel 2007 user. If you want impressive dynamic charts, though, the book is a great resource. Changes on the fly save time and extra work when working with charts.
The book is a bit long and covers complicated processes in Excel 2007 for the average user. The material is extensive and the examples are good. The reading is a bit on the dry side at times, but Excel is not necessarily the most exciting subject for many information workers. However, if you love Excel 2007, this book provides valuable insight into complex features of the application. Various processes for dynamic content are presented in detail and push the reader to go beyond simple tasks and use the true power behind Microsoft's Excel 2007. If you need to create spreadsheets that provide dynamic content through multiple applications, this book is a winner!
As a Microsoft Certified Trainer, I look at books as resources for specific tasks. This book delivers. I would have liked to know that the presentation method is drawn out and has extensive examples. I personally like a quick reference and examples to make sure I "get it right" based on what I read. This book does the job, but it is long and some areas may not be relevant for many Excel users. The book is useful, but plan on spending some time on the material. The content is very useful and the concepts allow the user to pull the full potential out of Excel for advanced dynamic content.
I do recommend this book and think it presents some excellent content, but if you are a beginner with Excel 2007, learn more about the application before going into advanced features presented in this book. With that being said, if you are a good study and grasp content quickly, this is a great book.
I would not give this book 5 stars, but it is far from mediocre and is deserving of a high 4 star rating. I do recommend this book and, as a Microsoft Certified Trainer, think the book presents excellent content that I could use and present in a learning environment!
J. Peterson said
I bought this book because it addressed a need I have - how to make better charts with the newest version of Excel (2007), and do it in a dynamic manner, i.e. with data that changes.
This is a typical computer book, with many hundreds of pages and an included CD of examples and other things.
One of the other things on the CD is an explanation of the author's "rS1.method" methodology (even the name should be a clue), which is used throughout the book and is used "in all the author's books" as though it were some kind of standard. In it the author prescribes a very set methodology and structure for laying out your multi-worksheet spreadsheets, and all the examples are based on it. If you need some discipline and like methodology, you will like this.
But if you are like me, impatient for results and not willing to be bound by a rigid framework, you will not like it.
The other thing I didn't like was the author's rambling and lecturing style. It was hard to wade through a long discourse on every subject before getting to the meat. One place in the small print it mentions that this book is "somewhat unusual" and is a "translation from the German" so that might explain why this is. I have read other books (history) that are direct translations from other languages (German in particular), and also from the one foreign language that I can read directly I know that the writing style differs by country and can seem quite strange to a reader in a different country. That seems to be the case with this book so it made tough going for me.
Anyway, there is useful material here and the book has helped me some, thus a generous 3 stars, but I wouldn't have bought it if I had known then what I know now.
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