All the functions have been tested in Microsoft Office Excel 2000 through Excel 2010. With the exception of characteristics specific to Excel 2007 and Excel 2010, most descriptions can even be used with Excel 97. Where necessary, we added comments regarding the particularities of the different versions.
The book is divided into four sections.
The first section contains Chapter 1 through Chapter 4. They describe working with Excel, provide a general introduction to using Excel 2010, and give you a first look at formulas and functions. For beginners and experts alike, we have outlined the use of formulas and table functions with all the important notes, instructions, tips, and tricks.
Because we consider the Excel 2010 PowerPivot add-in quite extraordinary, we have introduced it briefly in this section. It has relatively little to do with spreadsheet functions, but we still wanted to acquaint you with it.
Chapter 5, and Chapter 6, show that you can do a lot more with most functions than just use them in a worksheet. You can create and program your own functions.
Chapter 5 provides examples for using special functions in names and conditional formatting, as well as for validity and data checks. We hope you will find many ideas and clues for your own Excel solutions here.
Chapter 6 introduces you to programming in Excel. You can create any custom functions in Excel and then use them just like the built-in functions.
Chapter 7 through Chapter 17 provide the descriptions of the main Excel functions:
This book includes three appendices: Appendix A and Appendix B list the functions alphabetically and categorically (respectively), and Appendix C explains what is new in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010.
And now we wish you lots of success for your work with Microsoft Excel!