Excel Dashboards and Reports (Mr. Spreadsheet's Bookshelf)

I purchased this for my Quality Improvement Department. We compile a great deal of patient-centered data; in fact, data for 23,000 patients. We are well versed in Excel, but this book enhanced our capabilities tremendously! We're now able to track and trend our data so much more effectively. The only down side is that other departments are coming to us and wanting us to do the same for their data! Worth every penny. The instructions are simple enough to follow and anyone with a little more than beginner's knowledge can build on their knowledge base quite quickly and produce some very meaningful reports for their business or department.

I'm going to review this now and hopefully remember to come back in another month or so after I've read the entire thing and look at some of the problems. I'm about 100 pages in right now and am giving it a 4 star review. It's a very nice book, well written, follows Tufte's paradigm of less is more. Almost looks like a copy of what I'd imagine Dashboarding for Dummies in Excel would look. 100 pages in, I'd say that this book is probably more for a beginner to a novice with some Excel experience. With that said, it's packed with many awesome charting examples that would make great references for anyone not that familiar with Excel or Dashboarding. You can use the examples to quickly create nice charts and graphs. I should state that I have a BBA and a CIS major, took Office and Advanced Excel in Business College, graduated 10 years ago. I haven't used Excel on a regular basis and never considered myself an expert in charting. I am a data programmer, work with databases and support Enterprise software. I've read much material on dashboarding over the last month. I have a high profile dashboarding project that I've undertaken at work. This book has given me some good insight into dashboarding paradigms, some good examples of clean graphs/charts so far. It's also given me a good understanding of the data underneath the chart. How to get the data setup for dashboarding. Setting up areas in the spreadsheet that are dynamic table areas which rely on more raw data placed in the spreadsheet. Connecting the dynamic areas to a particular graph on the dashboard. Ultimately I will use a product that will initially have Excel as it's foundation but will migrate into a relationship database over the next couple years. After consuming the contents of this book, will make the best effort to return and give some overall feedback of the book. For the price, it makes a great reference book and I don't regret buying the book.

The main strengths about this book are 1. their easy to follow example files that are arranged per chapter, per figure. 2. The flow of discussion are in logical order, from the basic building blocks of the "how-to's" in Excel to the more advanced topics in BI 3. The book not only explains the tools, but also the aesthetics of effective data communications through visualizations If you have not experienced the making of KPI dashboards, this book will guide you through it. You will be surprised of how many features in Excel that are new and that will strengthen the message of your data visualization. Excellent book!

I liked the examples and tips the authors shared about building a dashboard. Some of the more effective tips were around building a data model using a three-stage process: (1) raw data; (2) staging table (analysis); and (3) presentation. Step two was the most helpful since it shows you how to stage your data using formulas and functions. I highlighted and bookmarked several passages from the book. It's THAT good.

didn’t know this was for older version of Excel...overpriced for book on outdated software...Walkenbach is always good info

This was a really good book. I recently reentered the business analysis field and knew that dashboards/reports would be a major part of my daily routine. Reading this book prior to my first day on the job was a HUGE help. It covers everything one needs to know about charts, pivot tables, data modeling as well as dashboard design. It is ripe with examples and and application.

It is a good book but is too basic. The title is about dashboard and reports. However, it does not talk a lot about how to design a better chart, for example, for a dashboard. Instead, it talks about some general knowledge which is good for beginners.

One among so many of my responsibilities is to crunch numbers and present as concise and efficient as possible our market, revenue and benchmarking trends to the executive team at my workplace (Casino) and we have several really powerful Datawarehouse layers of applications plus reporting plus data visualization but when it comes to ad hoc data massaging there is nothing like old true and tested Excel, this book will make your presentation a whole more efficient and easier not only to build but to understand and digest for your audience. I highly recommend this book.