Excel 2013 Formulas

Book Preface

Welcome to Excel 2013 Formulas. I approached this project with one goal in mind: to write the ultimate book about Excel formulas that would appeal to a broad base of users. That’s a fairly ambitious goal, but based on the feedback I received from the earlier editions, I think I accomplished it.

Excel is the spreadsheet market leader by a long shot not only because of Microsoft’s enormous marketing clout but also because it is truly the best spreadsheet available. One area in which Excel’s superiority is most apparent is formulas. Excel has some special tricks up its sleeve in the formulas department. As you’ll see, Excel lets you do things with formulas that are impossible with other spreadsheets.

It’s a safe bet that only about 10 percent of Excel users really understand how to get the most out of worksheet formulas. In this book, I attempt to nudge you into that elite group. Are you up to it?

What You Need to Know

This is not a book for beginning Excel users. If you have absolutely no experience with Excel, this is probably not the best book for you unless you’re one of a rare breed who can learn a new software product almost instantaneously.

To get the most out of this book, you should have some background using Excel. Specifically, I assume that you know how to

• Create workbooks, insert sheets, save files, and complete other basic tasks.

• Navigate a workbook.

• Use the Excel Ribbon and dialog boxes.

• Use basic Windows features, such as file management and copy-and-paste techniques.

What You Need to Have

I wrote this book with Excel 2013 as a base, but most of the material also applies to Excel 2010 and Excel 2007. If you’re using a version prior to Excel 2007, I suggest that you put down this book immediately and pick up a previous edition. The changes introduced in Excel 2007 are so extensive that you might be hopelessly confused if you try to follow along using an earlier version of Excel.

To download the examples for this book, you need to access the Internet. The examples are discussed further in the “About This Book’s Website” section, later in this Introduction.