Today I have finished reading through this book:
Excel Hacks
100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
By David Hawley, Raina Hawley
1st Edition March 2004
ISBN: 0-596-00625-X
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/excelhks/
I thought you would like to hear my thoughts about this book:
The book contains many useful tricks and tips for the Intermediate Excel user.
But in my opinion the book is not very well balanced. Frequently, relatively simple tasks are well explained, whereas complicated subjects are just included without any further elaboration.
Although the book is aimed at the intermediate user, it often either assumes too much knowledge about e.g. VBA or just doesnít give sufficient detail to really understand certain things.
But if you are in a hurry and need some quick fixes, the book may come in handy.
Regards,
Jan Karel Pieterse
JKP Application Development Services
I have to agree with your assesment. The title did not match up to the content. I did not find one useful thing in the etire book. Nothing in it qualifies as a “hack”. Anyone interested in buying a slightly used copy?
1. I think you’re right in critizing stuff that doesn’t match expectations or promises, irrespective of the fact that it comes from somebody “inside the Excel-community” (to which the Hawley’s are considered to belong to).
2. The quality of the book mentioned in my view fully justifies your judgement.
I agree with you. It is a good book I have learned a few things. I think it is a book to keep in your libary for references. The book that still gets the most use is Excel 2000 Formulas by J-Walk.
This book seems to be doing the rounds of late and getting mentioned on lots of sites.
It’s reported to be amazons top selling excel book i think, which does surprise me a little.
For 26 bucks, I think youíd be better spending a bit more and getting something like as J-walk offering ñ which will have most of these ìhacksî in anyway, plus a lot more.
I bought this book on reccomendation from another excel enthusiast I have talked to online…. I have to say that I was quite dissapointed with the book as whole…. There were a few errors in some of the code that I tried to use and I did not feel that I recieved value for my dollar. Some things in the book were very helpful but I think I could get that out of almost any book on the market.
Yes, I found a couple of errors too. I reported them to the publisher. There is even a part that might encourage users to set macro security to low. I stronlgy emphasized that this should be corrected.