Excel is an incredibly powerful program. It can arrange and analyze vast amounts of data; make sophisticated tables; draw multitudes of charts... It has several hundred functions that can be combined into thousands of formulas to calculate anything and everything. It can handle statistics and accounting; create models and forecasts; and so much more! On top of all that, it has wonderful programming capacities.

In short, it is omnipresent in its usage, huge in scope, and omnipotent in abilities.

And it can be quite intimidating!

The goal of the "Spreadsheet Adventures" series is to show you another – a friendly and lighthearted – side of Excel. Here, you will learn how to draw beautiful pictures and animations, and model random events in everyday life; you will help noble knights to defeat dragons and play Tic-Tac-Toe with monkeys; you will investigate the strange behavior of digits and create intriguing "drunkard walk" patterns… And throughout, you will have hundreds of puzzles to tease your brain, all the while mastering those intimidating formulas, charts, conditional formatting, and whatnot!

The series is planned as five books, with the first one already published, and more on the way:

  • Book I: "Coloring Fun with Conditional Formatting" is about creating intricate patterns and elegant coloring schemes, as well as moving pictures and time-lapse videos.

  • Book II: "Charming Charts" continues the painting theme by creating even more bizarre and beautiful drawings.

  • Book III: "As Luck Would Have It" deals with chance, wagers, probabilities, and -- you guessed it -- luck.

  • Book IV: "Magic Typewriter" tackles the seemingly uninspiring area of "lookup and reference functions" through treasure hunts and word transformation wizardry.

  • Book V: "More Adventures" will be the most diverse of all, dealing with all that's left: some interesting tidbits of math and life, all through the lenses of Excel's capabilities.

I hope that after reading this series, you will find yourself on much friendlier terms with Excel. Come along for the ride!

Book I: "Coloring Fun with Conditional Formatting" is now available for purchase!

The first book in the series is available to purchase today in e-book form, at https://leanpub.com/spreadsheetadventures. You can also see the first few chapters in the book sample.
In this book, you will learn a few logical functions (TRUE, FALSE, AND, OR, IF), a few math functions (MOD, ABS, INT, MAX, MIN), and how to use conditional formatting. With these simple ingredients, you will create an astonishing variety of intricate patterns!