Rediscovering Excel

Nothing has really changed in Excel between 1997 and 2007 except for some cosmetic transformations and WEB related functionalities that are weak at best.

What has changed radically is the computer on your desk. Since the arrival of Excel (20 years ago) the computer capacity and its memory have increased 1,000 folds and this personal computer of yours is now part of a network connecting you to the world. This is why Excel has become so more powerful and useful.

You can import data within your Excel spreadsheets and do the analysis and reporting that you need very rapidly and at a very low cost. You can now do things with Excel that were impossible even 5 years ago.

So here is a tutorial to rediscover Excel including some old functions and functionalities that were put on the shelves years ago because the personal computer couldn't handle them or because the data even if it existed was not accessible.

Because of this new reality of accessible business data the stars of this tutorial are the SUMPRODUCT function and the database functionalities. These tools will allow you to analyze the data rapidly and efficiently and to automate the reports presenting the results of your analysis.

As a reference here are all the 328 functions in Excel and what they do.

Appendix A: Excel Database Functions (12)
Appendix B: Excel Date and Time Functions (20)
Appendix C: Excel Engineering Functions (40)
Appendix D: Excel Financial Functions (53)
Appendix E: Excel Information Functions (17)
Appendix F: Excel Logical Functions (6)
Appendix G: Excel Lookup and Reference Functions (18)
Appendix H: Excel Mathematical Functions (58)
Appendix I: Excel Statistical Functions (80)
Appendix J: Excel Text Functions (24)