Excel 2019 Construction Kit #1: Calendar and Year Planner

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

In this Excel 2019 book (also suitable for Excel 365) 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 2019 application. In constructing this project you’ll discover new and interesting ways to use many of Excel 2019’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.

Mike Smart is the founder and CEO of The Smart Method.  In Mike's long career as an IT consultant, Mike specified, designed and delivered IT solutions for large corporations all over the world.  In 2002 Mike decided to specialize in IT training and founded The Smart Method.

Mike has personally taught classroom Excel courses to delegates from many of the world's largest companies in England, Europe and America. Mike has run courses for bankers, engineers, accountants, teachers, broadcasters, retailers, insurance brokers, aircraft manufacturers, government departments, on-line gaming companies, telecom workers, oil workers, car manufactures, power companies... and for many other professions. This has given him a unique insight into the diverse ways in which Excel is used by both large and small businesses.

By carefully observing the areas that students find the most difficult to understand, Mike has constantly refined his Smart Method teaching technique over a period of more than fifteen years.

In 2008 Mike realized that he could only ever teach a few thousand students in his classroom courses but could help millions of students by producing his Excel courses in book form. His first Excel books (covering Excel 2007) rapidly became best sellers and his books have topped best seller lists ever since.