Sebastopol, CA—First the crew over at MAKE and CRAFT Magazines--the "Bible of the DIY movement"--lit a big ol' bonfire of enthusiasm for the growing community of garage inventors, backyard scientists, crafters, and DIY enthusiasts around the planet. Now they're giving makers, crafters, business folks, and home office workers the tips, tools, and hacks for streamlining their spreadsheets.

Millions of users create and share Excel spreadsheets every day, but few go deeply enough to learn the techniques that will make their work much easier. Yet there are many ways to take advantage of Excel's sophisticated capabilities without spending hours on advanced study. Excel Hacks (O'Reilly, $29.99 US) provides more than 130 hacks--clever tools, tips and techniques--that will leapfrog your work beyond the ordinary.

Now expanded to include Excel 2007, authors Dave and Raina Hawley provide a resourceful, roll-up-your-sleeves guide that gives you little known "backdoor" tricks for several Excel versions using different platforms and external applications.

"With improved functionality with the release of Excel 2007, and the requirement in many offices to work across a range of applications in our work, share workbooks and work with the web, the release of Excel 2007 makes this much more user-friendly and easy to manage," explains Raina. "We run one of the largest Excel Question and Answer Forums in the world and the book is a product of some of the more common problems that people may encounter.

So think of this book as a toolbox. When a need arises or a problem occurs, you can simply use the right tool for the job. Hacks are grouped into chapters so you can find what you need quickly, including ways to:

• Reduce workbook and worksheet frustration--manage how users interact with worksheets, find and highlight information, and deal with debris and corruption.
• Analyze and manage data--extend and automate these features, moving beyond the limited tasks they were designed to perform.
• Hack names--learn not only how to name cells and ranges, but also how to create names that adapt to the data in your spreadsheet.
• Get the most out of PivotTables--avoid the problems that make them frustrating and learn how to extend them.
• Create customized charts--tweak and combine Excel's built-in charting capabilities.
• Hack formulas and functions--subjects range from moving formulas around to dealing with datatype issues to improving recalculation time.
• Make the most of macros--including ways to manage them and use them to extend other features.
• Use the enhanced capabilities of Microsoft Office 2007 to combine Excel with Word, Access, and Outlook.

You can either browse through the book or read it from cover to cover, studying the procedures and scripts to learn more about Excel. However you use it, Excel Hacks will help you increase productivity and give you hours of "hacking" enjoyment along the way.

For a review copy or more information please email peyton@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.

David Hawley is a professional Microsoft Excel consultant whose company, OzGrid Business Applications, offers services in all aspects of Excel, and VBA for Excel.

Raina Hawley is a professional Microsoft Excel consultant whose company, OzGrid Business Applications, offers services in all aspects of Excel, and VBA for Excel.

Additional Resources:
For more information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see: http://www.oreilly/catalog/9780596528348 9780596528348 -->