许多人必须对Microsoft Excel(Microsoft Excel)有足够的了解才能胜任工作。结果，我遇到了很多人，他们收到了他们需要学习创建电子表格的消息，他们满怀热情地在学校门前的人行道上刮下口香糖。电子表格真的是充满有毒废物的外星雷区吗？一本书(book explain) 能否以易于理解而且易于使用的术语来解释Microsoft Excel ？Microsoft Excel 2010 Step By Step就是为此目的而编写的。让我们来看看作者 - Curtis D. Frye - 是如何成功的。
成功(Success)的步骤，或者至少(Least)这是计划
看过我评论的人都知道，我是Step By Step系列的粉丝。我喜欢一次一小步处理困难主题的方法。我开始阅读这本书时对Microsoft Excel(Microsoft Excel)的工作原理有基本的了解，但仅此而已，并希望在阅读过程中掌握更多技能。
与本系列中的所有书籍一样，有一个介绍，为读者提供程序的简要概述，以及此版本程序中更改的内容的摘要。使用过Microsoft Excel 2007的人可能会熟悉其中的大部分功能。初学者或只使用过早期版本的人可能会发现新命令的解释更令人困惑而不是帮助，因为作者使用了这种技术语言。他还从谈论迷你图、切片器和数据透视表之类的东西开始。你好(Hello)？让我们(Let)先了解基本概念，然后再关注高级主题。想要逐步学习(step approach)程序的人想要(program want)从头开始。微软在发布(Microsoft)Microsoft Excel 2010之前进行了广泛的可用性研究，目的是使其更加用户友好且布局更加合理。简介详细介绍了我从未听说过的各种事物的变化。坦率(Quite)地说，作者不应该在这些事情上浪费页面，而应该为任何可能感兴趣的人提供一个指向Microsoft 网站上列表的链接。(Microsoft web)一个初学者或(beginner or person)只有基本知识的人不会知道这些东西是什么，一个足以识别它们的人不会阅读一步一步(Step By Step)的书。
在我看来，这部分也被作者的写作风格(writing style)所破坏。他说：“使用数据透视表，用户可以有效地汇总大型数据集，例如通过动态重新排列值以强调数据的不同方面。能够限制出现在数据透视表中的数据通常很有用，因此 Excel团队包括用户过滤数据透视表的功能。” 那是从介绍开始的。它可以作为对未来的警告。
就这么开始了
经过 40 多页的介绍性材料，本书终于谈及了使用Microsoft Excel 2010的业务。它建议人们经常保存他们的工作，没有提到Microsoft Excel 的(Microsoft Excel's)内置自动恢复(AutoRecover)功能。自动恢复(AutoRecover)是每个人都(something everyone)应该知道的。无论它的名称是什么，它都会每隔几分钟保存一次您的工作，因此如果发生故障，您不会损失太多，如果有的话。本书有练习文件可供使用，作者清楚地认为使用这些文件的练习是不言自明的。他以Document Properties为例，然后指导读者在练习文件(practice file)。为什么要使用这些特定术语？没有解释。“设置工作簿”("Setting Up a Workbook")一章以关于自定义Microsoft Excel 2010以适合您自己的喜好的广泛部分结束。介绍性章节(introductory chapter)中有一节涉及自定义功能区(Ribbon)。所有关于如何使程序适合(program suit one)自己的喜好的材料都应该放在单独的“定制”("Customizing")一章中。谁会在名为“设置工作簿”("Setting Up a Workbook")的章节中查看有关自定义Microsoft Excel 2010整体的说明？
数据、数据输入和表格
数据输入部分包括有关AutoFill、FilllSeries和AutoComplete等有用工具的信息，但没有注意到简单的事情，例如在输入单个值后按Enter或Tab时会发生什么。(Tab)自动填充选项(AutoFill Options)菜单项以“tech-ese”而不是简单的英语解释(English)。如果练习不是那么敷衍的话，使用练习文件(practice file)进行练习可能有助于澄清正在发生的事情。同样(Again)，有经验的用户快速完成这个过程不会有任何问题，但初学者几乎肯定会想要更多的解释和练习方式(explanation and practice)，对于一本表面上针对初学者的书来说，这只是一长串失败中的另一个。关于移动数据和查找和替换数据(finding and replacing data)的部分要好一些，练习文件(practice file)似乎很有帮助。粘贴实时预览(Paste Live Preview)是一个非常有用的新功能，它的解释很好。不幸的是，这是一个罕见的直接解释的例子。关于创建表格的部分采用了一个相当容易理解的概念，并设法(easy-to-understand concept and manages)将其隐藏在大量文字之下。第一的(First)你这样做，然后你这样做，哦，如果你这样做，它也会这样做，如果你不想这样做，你修复它，然后......你明白了。在本书的这一点上，“一步一步”的概念已经在外太空的某个地方消失了。
计算，不是那么简单(Plain and Simple)
电子表格的主要目的是对数字的行和列进行计算。为此，您需要知道如何在单元格中正确输入公式，并告诉公式您要计算哪些单元格。输入这些东西的方式对于初学者来说并不是特别直观，了解它是如何工作的对于成功至关重要。我只能说，我很高兴我已经知道如何做到这一点。试图从这些说明中弄清楚它需要比我能鼓起的更多的奉献精神。这是一个示例解释：“当您单击命名范围时，Excel 会在“引用到”字段中显示它包含的单元格。单击“编辑”按钮会显示“编辑名称”对话框，它是“新名称”对话框的一个版本，使您能够更改命名范围的定义; 例如，通过添加一列。您还可以使用“名称管理器”对话框中的控件来删除命名范围（范围，而不是数据），方法是单击它，单击“删除”按钮，然后在确认中单击“确定”打开的对话框。” 清如泥！
保持外观
解释如何更改电子表格外观的部分做得相当好，但过于依赖用户完成练习文件的过程。有很多事情可以使电子表格更具可读性、突出显示重要数据和打印输出外观(printout look)很好，作者以相当直接的方式遍历了所有这些。然而，电子表格的目的是处理数据。我认为关于自定义电子表格外观的这一部分应该在解释如何处理事实和数据的章节之后。练习文件被设置为虚拟企业可能希望使用电子表格做的事情的示例，因此有关过滤、重组、组合和分析数据的章节都大量使用了练习文件。再次(Again)，对正在做的事情的解释是敷衍的，作者的写作风格没有改善。一切都得到了解释，但是在费了一百多页之后才找到电子表格使用的“肉”(spreadsheet use)，我不确定是否有人真的愿意在这一点上继续前进。老实说，如果我没有阅读Microsoft Excel 2010 Step By Step来复习它，我什至不会走到这一步。
我可以继续，但是....
我认为现在很清楚这本书不值得你花时间。它写得不好，组织也很差，虽然作者显然对Microsoft Excel 2010了解很多，但他也迷失了目标受众——需要用清晰的语言一步一步解释一切的新手。作为一个一直是Step By Step系列的粉丝，并且对它们始终如一的品质感到敬畏的人，我想知道编辑人员中是否有人在这本书出版时正在休假。
判决
通常，当我为一本我不那么热衷的书写评论时，我仍然会尽力在其中找到值得称赞的地方。我试着仔细阅读并寻找积极的话。我对这本书有过这样的经历，甚至作为一个只有基本知识的Microsoft Excel用户和(Microsoft Excel)Step By Step系列的粉丝进入这本书。我什至不建议在图书馆外查看这个，任何读过我其他评论的人都知道这对我来说是第一次。那里有更好的书。把这个留在架子上。
Book Review - Microsoft Excel 2010 Step By Step
Many people have to learn just enough about Microsoft Excel to get by on the job. As a result, I've met a lot of people who've greeted the news that they need to learn to create spreadsheets with all the enthusiasm they'd have for a job scraping chewing gum off the sidewalk in front of a school. Is a spreadsheet really an alien minefield filled with toxic waste? Can a book explain Microsoft Excel in terms that make it not only easy to understand but easy to use? Microsoft Excel 2010 Step By Step was written for that purpose. Let's take a look and see how well the author - Curtis D. Frye - succeeded.
Steps to Success, Or At Least That's the Plan
As those of you who've read my reviews know, I am a fan of the Step By Step series. I like the approach of tackling difficult subjects one small step at a time. I began reading this book with a basic knowledge of how Microsoft Excel works, but not much more, and hoped to pick up more skills as I went along.
As with all the books in this series, there is an introduction that gives the reader a brief overview of the program, and a summary of the things that have changed in this version of the program. People who have used Microsoft Excel 2007 will probably be familiar with most of these features. Those who are beginners or have only used earlier editions may find the explanation of the new commands more confusing than helpful because the author used such technical language. He also starts out by talking about things like sparklines, slicers and pivot tables. Hello? Let's get the basic concepts down first and then worry about the advanced topics. People who want a step by step approach to learning a program want to begin at the beginning. Microsoft did extensive usability studies before releasing Microsoft Excel 2010, with the goal of making it more user-friendly and more logically laid out. The introduction goes into quite a bit of detail about the changes to all kinds of things I never heard of. Quite frankly, instead of wasting pages on these things, the author should have provided a link to a list on the Microsoft web site for anyone who might be interested. A beginner or person with only basic knowledge won't know what these things are, and a person advanced enough to recognize them isn't going to be reading a Step By Step book.
This section is also marred, in my opinion, by the author's writing style. He says things like: "With PivotTables, users can summarize large data sets efficiently, such as by rearranging values dynamically to emphasize different aspects of the data. It's often useful to be able to limit the data that appears in a PivotTable, so the Excel team included the functionality for users to filter Pivot Tables." And that's from the introduction. It serves as a warning for what lies ahead.
And So It Begins
After more than 40 pages of introductory material, the book finally gets down to the business of using Microsoft Excel 2010. It advises people to save their work frequently, with no mention of Microsoft Excel's built-in AutoRecover function. AutoRecover is something everyone should know about. Whatever it's named, it saves your work every few minutes so you don't lose much, if anything, if something crashes. There are practice files available to be used with the book, and the author clearly thinks the exercises that use these files are self-explanatory. He talks about Document Properties, for example, and then directs the reader to fill in several keywords on the practice file. Why these particular terms? No explanation. The "Setting Up a Workbook" chapter ends with an extensive section on customizing Microsoft Excel 2010 to suit your own preferences.There was a section in the introductory chapter that dealt with customizing the Ribbon. All the material about ways to make the program suit one's own preferences should have been placed in a separate "Customizing" chapter. Who would look in a chapter called "Setting Up a Workbook" for instructions for customizing Microsoft Excel 2010 as a whole?
Data, Data Entry and Tables
The section on data entry includes information about helpful tools like AutoFill, FilllSeries and AutoComplete, but fails to note simple things like what happens when you press Enter or Tab after entering a single value. The AutoFill Options menu items are explained in "tech-ese" instead of plain English. Doing the exercise with the practice file could have helped to clarify what's going on, if the exercise had not been so perfunctory. Again, an experienced user would have had no problem going through this quickly, but a beginner would almost certainly want more in the way of explanation and practice, and for a book ostensibly aimed at beginners, this is just another in a long list of failures. The sections on moving data and finding and replacing data are a little better, and the practice files seem to actually be helpful. Paste Live Preview is an extremely useful new feature and it's explained pretty well. Unfortunately, this is a rare example of straightforward explanation. The section on creating tables takes a fairly easy-to-understand concept and manages to bury it under an avalanche of words. First you do this, then you do that, and oh, if you do this it also does this and if you didn't mean to do this you fix it and... you get the idea. By this point in the book the "step by step" concept has vanished somewhere in outer space.
Calculations, Not So Plain and Simple
The primary purpose of a spreadsheet is to do calculations on rows and columns of numbers. To do this, you need to know how to enter formulas properly in cells, and to tell the formulas which cells you want to calculate. The way those things are entered is not particularly intuitive for the beginner, and understanding how it all works is essential for success. All I can say is, I'm glad I already know how to do this. Trying to figure it out from these instructions would require a lot more dedication than I can muster up. Here's a sample explanation: "When you click a named range, Excel displays the cells it encompasses in the Refers To field. Clicking the Edit button displays the Edit Name dialog box, which is a version of the New Name dialog box, enabling you to change a named range's definition; for example, by adding a column. You can also use the controls in the Name Manager dialog box to delete a named range (the range, not the data) by clicking it, clicking the Delete button, and then clicking OK in the confirmation dialog box that opens." Clear as mud!
Keeping Up Appearances
The section that explains how to change the appearance of your spreadsheet is reasonably well done, but relies too heavily on the user working through the process on the practice files. There are many things one can do to make a spreadsheet more readable, highlight important data and make a printout look good, and the author goes through all of them in a fairly straightforward manner. However, again, the purpose of a spreadsheet is to deal with the data. I think this section on customizing the look of the spreadsheet should have come after the chapters that explain how to manipulate the facts and figures. The practice files are set up as examples of things a fictitious business might want to do with a spreadsheet, so the chapters that talk about filtering, reorganizing, combining and analyzing data all make heavy use of the practice files. Again, the explanation of what's being done is perfunctory and the author's writing style doesn't improve. Everything is explained, but after having to slog through over a hundred pages just to get to the "meat" of spreadsheet use, I'm not sure anyone's really willing to keep going at this point. I'll be honest with you—if I hadn't been reading Microsoft Excel 2010 Step By Step to review it, I wouldn't have gotten even this far.
I Could Go On, But....
I think it's pretty clear by now that this book isn't worth your time. It's poorly written and poorly organized, and while the author clearly knows a lot about Microsoft Excel 2010, he's also lost track of his target audience—the newcomer who needs everything explained in clear language, step by step. As someone who's always been a fan of the Step By Step series, and who stands in awe of their consistent quality, I came away wondering if someone on the editorial staff was on vacation when this one went to press.
Verdict
Usually, when I write a review of a book I'm not so enthusiastic about, I still do my best to find things to praise in it. I try to read carefully and look for positive things to say. I had the absolute dickens of a time doing that with this book, even going into it as both a Microsoft Excel user with only basic knowledge and as a fan of the Step By Step series. I wouldn't even recommend checking this one out of the library, and anyone who's read my other reviews knows that's a first for me. There are better books out there. Leave this one on the shelf.
