Excel As Your Database
Book Review

By Dale Farris, Reviews Coordinator Golden Triangle PC Club October 2007 General Overview Excel As Your Database guides those of you who need to manage facts and figures yet have little experience, budget, or need for a full-scale relational database management system. You'll learn how to use Excel to enter, store, and analyze your data. This book is written and organized in a way that assumes you have some familiarity with Excel, but not with databases. The book features quick-start solutions, practice exercises, troubleshooting tips, and best practices. This book covers Excel 2007 and 2003. The author clarifies not just how to use a technique, but under what realistic scenarios. The text features step-by-step, how-to procedures. Try-it-out exercises are based on realistic sample data. Table of Contents The seven (7) chapters include: 1)  Data Basics 2)  Define Your Data 3)  Enter Data 4)  Find Data 5)  Connect to Other Databases 6)  Analyze Data 7)  Automate Repetitive Database Tasks Target Readers This book shows you how to use Microsoft Office Excel as an effective database storage and retrieval system. Many people use Excel mostly to perform worksheet functions, such as adding, subtracting, finding the average of different sets of numbers, and so forth. Excel can do much more. For certain types of data, Excel is an ideal data management system that is a less expensive alternative to larger computing-intensive systems, such as Microsoft Access, designed for large organizations to store sizable amounts of data. If you do not have the time or interest to master advanced data storage and data management techniques, Excel has a relatively easy learning curve. Also, Excel provides data analysis features that are missing from many more expensive data management systems. If you want to spend less time learning fairly powerful data analysis techniques, or if you have a limited budget or a limited set of computing resources, this book shows you how to quickly and confidently use Excel as a robust data management system. The book also features "Quick Start" and "Try It" sections to help you get going fast with plenty of hands-on practice. Book Contents 250 pages; about the author; acknowledgments; introduction; figures; tips; tables; screenshots; detailed index Note also that the book provides you with the information you need to access from the www.apress.com site all the sample files explained in the book. This means you can easily follow along with the author's explanation on your own machine and complete all the steps he fully describes in the book. Author Paul Cornell About the Author Paul Cornell works at Microsoft on the documentation team for Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office system. He worked as an editor, writer, and columnist on the MSDN Office Developer Center and edited the Microsoft Office Visual Basic Language Reference. Cornell also founded the Power User Corner, on Microsoft Office Online, where he was a frequent contributor. Paul has been involved with helping folks get the most out of Microsoft Office Excel for more than 7 years. Paul has written two previous books on Excel for Apress and one book about Excel for Microsoft Press. He has also helped Microsoft produce online documentation, and blogged about the Visual Basic Language Reference for Office as well as Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System. In his current role at Microsoft, Paul serves as a documentation manager on the Microsoft Visual Studio User Education team. He lives with his wife and two daughters among the mountains of the Pacific Northwestern U.S. ISBN January 2007 - First Edition ISBN 10: 1-59059-751-6 ISBN 13: 978-1-59059-751-4 List Price $34.99 $17.50 - eBook Price About Apress Apress is a publishing company devoted to meeting the needs of programming professionals. Apress' unique approach to computer book publishing grew out of conversations between Dan Appleman and Gary Cornell, Apress' founders, who believe that too many programming books are of such low quality that they are a complete waste of time. Computer professionals need quality books that are not just rehashes of documentation. The "A" in Apress stands for The Author's Press, and their books have "The Expert's Voice." Apress acquires manuscripts of the highest quality by attracting the best authors and technical experts that the world has to offer. Apress makes authors partners in the publishing process, doesn't impose a "house style" on authors, and doesn't make them conform to a series that straightjacket's them. Apress also makes sure that authors are treated equitably. Another key feature of the Apress approach to publishing books is taken from the software industry. Apress treats the technical review process as seriously as the best software companies treat the quality assurance process. Apress is convinced that the innovations listed above make it possible for them to produce the highest quality books, recruit the highest quality authors, and publish titles that information technology professionals need and want. The Apress management team ensures that the distribution and fulfillment of Apress titles is second to none, and that the capital is available to move aggressively and take advantage of any publishing opportunities that arise. To accomplish this, Apress has entered into a partnership with Springer-Verlag, one of the world's most respected publishing houses. Springer-Verlag is convinced that Apress will be the publisher of quality trade computer paperbacks in the years to come. Apress will continue to publish titles of the highest quality, and has compiled a team of authors that reads like a veritable "Who's Who" list of the computing industry. The company founders have published over 200 software titles by leading software professionals, all of whom have "The Expert's Voice." Publisher Contact Cheryl Martinez Marketing Coordinator Apress 2855 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 600 Berkeley, California 94705 510-549-5930 ext. 129 FAX 510-549-5939 cheryl@apress.com www.apress.com