10 Best Books on MS Excel

Microsoft Excel is a very powerful and essential tool to maintain, save and analyze various types of data. It is software that is used by many users in everyday life. Here is a list of the few best Excel Books for beginners and intermediate level that should be part of any user to learn more about Excel.

Best Books to learn MS Excel

1. Excel 2019 All – in- One For Dummies

Author: Grey Harvey

Excel 2019 All-in-One For Dummies is a book published in the year 2018. This book offers eight books in one. This book totally contains the updated information to reflect the major change Microsoft is making to the 2019 Office. It provides very detailed information about excel basic functions such as formatting worksheets, formulas, importing data, and other statistical functions.

There are also more advanced topics covered in the book such as worksheet sharing, performing error trapping, building, and running macros, and using Excel with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI helps to model, analyze and visualize large quantities of data from different sources.

2. Introduction to Excel VBA Macros using Visual Basic

Author: L Castelluzzo

This book helps the reader to know how to begin using Visual Basic code to write and execute customized macros in Microsoft Excel. There are also variables, worksheets, spreadsheet files, cell formulas, relative referencing, copying and pasting, finding cells with data, and much more are covered in this book.

The main intention of this book is to deliver the contents to the reader to perform regular tasks in Excel using Visual Basic code. This will help the reader to perform their work thousands of times much faster with minimal effort. The code in this book is available at https://sites.google.com/view/questions-with-solutions/excel-vba-macro-code.

The code examples in this book have been written in a generic way which will allow the user to understand easily. It is not really required for the user to memorize the code, but this could assist the user to build the code effectively.

3. Excel 2016: Pivot Table Data Crunching

Author: Bill Jelen, Michael Alexander

If the reader wants to know more about the pivot tables, then this is one of the best Excel books, to begin with. Bill Jelen is an Excel MVP and one of the leading authorities in Excel spreadsheets.

This book covers most of the basic concepts of Pivot Table in detail and then it assists the reader with some advanced concepts in Pivot Table such as Power Pivot and Visual Basic Applications etc. There are also example files that can be downloaded and it is mainly provided to showcase the Pivot Table concepts.

The reader will also get many practical case studies while going through this book which will really help in getting a clear picture of when and how to use Pivot Tables.

4. Microsoft Excel 2016 Bible: The comprehensive tutorial resource.

Author: John Walkenbach

John Walkenbach is one of the leading authorities in excel. As the name suggests it is a bible about excel spreadsheets.

It is categorized into seven parts where each part handles an aspect of Excel in a detailed manner. The first three parts are about how to start with excel, How to make use of the formulas and functions provided in excel, and creating charts and graphics. The rest of the part in the book covers the advanced Excel features and how to analyze the data in Excel spreadsheets.

There is also a part that covers programming in VBA. This book is one of the best starting points and it has a lot of topics covered in this book.

5. Excel: Quick start Guide from Beginner to Expert.

Author: William Fischer

Excel: Quick start Guide from Beginner to Expert is one of the best Excel books which a user can practice for the interviews. A user can quickly pressure on excel skills they have and it is very much recommended when you have an excel interview to clear. This book is quite basic which has covered probably only the beginner topics.

An interesting fact about this book is that it is only 100 pages long and it would cost very little in kindle. It is designed in such a way that it should be consumed quickly and so don’t expect the book to cover the topics in a detailed manner.

6. Power Pivot and Power BI

Author: Rob Collie, Avichal Sign

It is one of the best Excel books for the readers starting out with Power Pivot, Power Query, and Power BI. The book does a great job in introducing you to the benefits of Power Pivot and is full of practical examples. It also covers DAX formulas in detail.

There are so many tricks and tips available in this book and it might benefit the advanced users also. It introduces the benefits and practical examples of power pivot. DAX formulas are also covered in brief. To benefit from the book, the reader must have an idea of Pivot Table, relationships, and databases.

7. Microsoft Excel 2019 Data Analysis and Business Modeling (6th Edition)

Author: Wayne Winston

This is one of the reference books that helps the user to learn excel and attain the accurate solution of excel complex topics such as pivot table, advanced filtering, and so on. This book also covers topics such as power query and transform to Office 365 and stock data types. The book helps the user to enhance the knowledge in PowerQuery, geographic and temporal data with 3D Maps.

8. Professional Excel Development

Author: Rob Bovey, Dennis Wallentin, Stephen Bullen and John Green

Professional Excel Development is one of the excel reference books for developers who want to construct effective and powerful Excel applications using the latest and advanced technologies. This book covers the real-world experience of the authors by explaining how the features in excel work in real life.

9. Microsoft Excel Dashboards and Reports

Authors: Michael Alexander and John Walkenbach

Microsoft Excel Dashboards and Reports is one of the best excel books to learn about the dashboards in excel. This book is categorized into five parts. The first two parts cover how to get started with excel dashboards by introducing the charts in them. The rest of the parts in the book covers advanced topics such as advanced charting concepts, pivot tables etc.

This book mainly focuses on important dashboard concepts and shows the user how to utilize it. It is totally about important dashboard rules and guidelines that help the user to create world-class excel dashboards.

10. Excel 2016: Power Programming with VBA

Authors: Michael Alexander and Dick Kusleika

Michael Alexander and Dick Kusleika are considered experts in VBA and programming languages. This book is mainly written for VBA beginners as well as for advanced users. Before going through this book make sure you have a little working knowledge of VBA.

The first few parts in the book cover the introduction and advanced Excel VBA techniques. The remaining part covers developing the excel applications. Though the title suggests it is for excel 2016, the user can apply the concepts even in the prior versions or later versions of excel.

Summary

In this tutorial, we have seen the best Excel books to master ourselves in Excel and VBA programming. These books will assist both the beginner and advanced programmers of Excel.