Chapter 1

Introducing Excel 2010

Most people don't quite appreciate it, but lurking in the inner recesses of their hard drives in the Microsoft Office suite is a mighty, flexible—and often dormant—tool for working with information in countless ways: Microsoft Excel.

Of course, people know it's in there somewhere, but even in an age in which computer savvy is increasingly widespread, computer users often just don't realize exactly what they have in their PCs, and how a deeper understanding of Excel can make the work they need to do easier, both on the job and at home.

When I speak to people about Excel, they marvel at the programming wisdom that enables it to do what it does (or rather what it can do). But the next step—actually applying Excel productively to a task, or applying a technique that can do a job more deftly than it's being done currently—is often something else again.