Recommend books about Excel, Access

In My Humble Opinion
1

I started a new job today, and quickly discovered I’ll need more facility with Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access than I have now.

I’ve used both, but I’m rusty. I last built a (small) Access database in 1998. And while I recently used Excel in a statistics class, now I need to master other parts of it besides statistics.

So I could use books or websites that will stand in for the classes (beginning through advanced) that I don’t have time to take. What are your favorites?

I’m on a PC (Windows XP) running Office 2003, if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance,
E.

2

I always recommend the Dummies books - Excel 2003 for Dummies and Access 2003 for Dummies - as either an introduction or quick refresher course.

If that’s too basic, I like either the Wiley series - Excel 2003 Bible and Access 2003 Bible - or the Que series - Using Excel 2003 and Using Access 2003.

I’ve used all of these (well, the '97 or 2000 versions) to go from zero-to-temp-to-employee using Access in my current job and to teach myself about the advanced features in Excel. I like Que better than Wiley, but YMMV.

Another good resource is the Utter Access Discussion Forums. Obviously, the focus is Access, but there’s a lot of useful stuff for Excel and other Office apps, as well as VBA and meta-info like database design and table normalization.

I don’t think of myself as any kind of Access or Excel expert, but if you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them. Good luck!