Mike Girvin - Slaying Excel Dragons: A Beginners Guide to Conquering Excels Frustrations and Making Excel Fun

Table of Contents

A Beginners Guide to Conquering Excels
Frustrations and Making Excel Fun

Mike excelisfun Girvin

Holy Macro! Books

PO Box 82, Uniontown, OH 44685

Slaying Excel Dragons

2011 by Mike Girvin and Holy Macro! Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any storage retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

All terms known in this book to be trademarks have been appropriately capitalized. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are not affiliated with Holy Macro! Books.

Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information is provided on an as is basis. The authors and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book.

ISBN: 978-1-61547-302-1 (ePub); 978-1-61547-000-6 (Print)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010904992

First Printing : February, 2011

Author: Mike Girvin

Technical Editor: Bob Umlas

Copy Editor: Keith Cline

Cover Design: Shannon Mattiza, 6Ft4 Productions

Illustrations: Timm Joy

More Graphics: Scott Scottie P Pierson

Image Processing: Fine Grains, India

Layout : Mary Ellen Jelen

Additional Production: Schar Oswald, Zeke Jelen

InDesign Consultant: Anne Marie Concepcion

Publisher: Bill Jelen

Published by: Holy Macro! Books, PO Box 82, Uniontown OH 44685

Distributed by: Independent Publishers Group, Chicago, IL

Dedication

Dedicated to:

Dennis Big D Ho (14 year old son) who likes to read a lot

Isaac Viet Girvin (4 year old son) who likes to go on adventures a lot

About the Author

My name is Michael Gel Girvin. From 1984 to 1997 I was a world class boomerang thrower who won multiple world titles. From 1988 to 1998 I ran a boomerang manufacturing company called Gel Boomerangs and the boomerangs earned numerous awards. During the early years of running the company I was computer illiterate and did not know how to use a database or spreadsheet. After I hired a consultant to teach me how to build a database and how to use a spreadsheet, my business life was transformed. My ability to create financial reports, do taxes and perform cost accounting was dramatically improved because I was starting to become computer literate. In particular, it was my growing ability to use Excel that allowed me to make better business decisions. As I learned more about what Excel could do it dawned on me that knowing how to use Excel to efficiently build robust solutions was one of the most important skills that any working human should possess. Why isnt this taught in the schools, I thought?

This led me into teaching. From 2002 to current I taught (and still teach) accounting, finance, statistics and math classes at Highline Community College. My primary goal as a teacher is to teach all my classes in a computer lab using only Excel - no paper and handheld calculators are allowed. In about 2004 I found Bill MrExcel Jelens web site: www.mrexcel.com. This site had three amazing things: a message board where anyone could ask questions, a daily Excel PodCast (Excel TV) and easy to understand books. As a business person and an educator who was like a dry Excel sponge, I soaked up all I could from the MrExcel site and brought it to my classes. In addition, I appropriated MrExcels idea of Excel TV by posting over 1000 Excel how to videos at YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/excelisfun). About 15,000 videos are watched every day at the excelisfun channel at YouTube site.

It is from my insights as a once-computer illiterate business person, an Excel-Business teacher and an avid fan of the MrExcel web site that I write this book.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Bill MrExcel Jelen for doing more than any other person on the earth to bring Excel to the world with his Message Board, Excel TV Podcasts and his amazing books! If it were not for him, I would not be writing this book. Thanks to Bob Umlas for an amazing technical editing job! Thanks to Keith Cline for the stellar paying attention in English class editing. Thanks to my two bosses at Highline Jeff Ward and Joy Smucker for bending over backwards to allow me time for writing this book.

Foreword

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was on the phone with a fruit-and-nut guy, a potential client who was interested in hiring me to write some VBA macros to automate the recipe calculations for the various trail mixes that he sold. He started off with a line that I had heard a few times before:

I was about to thank him for the compliment, when I realized that it wasnt a compliment at all. He finished his sentence:

Huh? What was he talking about??? I, MrExcel, was the Excel podcast guy on YouTube. Thanks to my former gig on TechTV, I had monthly access to podcasting pioneers such as Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur. They were both a few months into their podcasting career when I jumped aboard and was producing video podcasts every weekday back in 2006. I had been pretty sure that I had the corner on the Excel podcast market.

Soon thereafter, I met Mike Girvin. Our Dueling Excel podcasts each Friday show that there are many different ways to solve a problem in Excel.

I love the fact that Mike builds his college classes around Excel. Whether he is teaching Excel, Statistics, Accounting, or Math, his students do 100% of their school work in Excel. This is, quite frankly, how the world should work. You should do everything in Excel.

Ive written quite a few intermediate to advanced books about Excel. In my world, the accountants in my seminars use Excel 40 hours a week. The questions that I get all the time are the fairly advanced. I am too far removed from the people who are brand new to Excel. Mike, through his students, has contact every school day with dozens of people who might be struggling through their first experiences with worksheets. Because of this, Mike has a unique perspective into the dragons that make Excel seem so intimidating. I wanted to add a beginning Excel book to my publishing line-up and I am thrilled that Mike offered to write the book that you are holding.

Bill MrExcel Jelen

Introduction

Have you ever used Excel and been frustrated that you couldnt get it to do what you want? Like trying to enter 2% into a cell, but it shows up as 200%, or trying to create a month report from daily transactional data, but you dont know how to add sales for each month, or adding a column of numbers, but the total is a few pennies off. If you have encountered problems such as these, this book can help you to overcome these problems and become an Excel Master!

Being an Excel Master is important because Excel is the default program on the planet, and we humans must know how to use it. Because most people arent fluent in Excel, knowing how to use Excel efficiently is an easy way to impress the boss, look good in a job interview, or transform your ability to run your own business.

This book is intended for anyone who wants to master Excel: beginners, intermediate users, and even advanced users. The fact is that most of us intermediate and advanced users learned Excel in bits and pieces and have holes in what we know. This book tells the story of how to master Excel without holes. In this way, this book can be useful for anyone who reads it.