This book is suitable for both Excel beginners and seasoned experts.

In this Excel 2016 book you’ll learn how to use and apply advanced Excel skills to construct a robust Excel business application that would be well beyond the powers of most advanced Excel users.

Even if you only have very basic Excel skills, the book is designed in such a way that you’ll be able to construct a complex, polished professional Excel 2016 application. In constructing this project you’ll discover new and interesting ways to use many of Excel 2016’s more powerful and complex features.

This book will teach you best-practice when applying your Excel skills to large real-world projects.

This book won’t only teach you Excel skills. You’ll also learn a best-practice design and development methodology that will stand you in good stead when working on future Excel projects.

What you will learn

Most Excel tutorials and reference books teach how to use individual Excel features but don’t show how you can combine them into a robust and complex Excel application. In this book you will combine 80 key Excel skills to produce a single advanced Excel application. Here are just a few of the skills you’ll use:

• Create a custom color set.
• Use custom formats.
• Use Spin Button and Check Box form controls.
• Define named ranges and named cells.
• Use the Name Manager to view, delete and edit range names.
• Create a drop-down list using a list validation.
• Use and understand the practical use of over 20 Excel functions including VLOOKUP, COUNTIF, DAY, MONTH, DATE, IFERROR, CHAR, IF, IFERROR, LEN, MOD, ROW, TEXT and WEEKDAY.
• Understand date serial numbers.
• Understand precedence rules.
• Format date serial numbers using a custom format.
• Create a formula-driven conditional format.
• Use the conditional format Rules Manager.
• Calculate the correct date (in any year) for Martin Luther King Day, President’s Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving Day, New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Christmas Day and Veterans Day, Easter Sunday and Memorial Day.
• Use structured table references.
• Concatenate text.
• Calculate the phases of the moon using Synodic Months and the MOD function.
• Create user-friendly validation error messages.
• Use Smart Tags.
• Lock cells, hide columns, hide entire worksheets and protect worksheets to prevent users from making unwanted changes.

Companies who have taken Smart Method courses include:

AOL Time Warner, The United States Army, Daimler Chrysler, Motorola, HSBC, Barclays, American Express, Allied Irish Banks, Imperial Tobacco, Volvo, The BBC, British Petroleum, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Unilever, The Institute of Chartered Accountants, The Ministry of Defence, Keele University, Deutsche Bank, HBOS, Transport For London, The Performing Rights Society, Scottish Power, The Office of the Parliamentary Ombudsman, BAE Systems, RBS, The British Museum, The National Gallery, Pokerstars, Marks & Spencer, Virgin, O2, BMW... and many, many others.