User Guide

Which Excel?

This book is a manual for actively working with and manipulating content in Excel. There are, however, many versions of Excel—which one is needed?

Use Windows (not Mac) desktop (not browser) Excel.

Some of the files will work on a Mac, but the best solution for Mac users is to emulate Windows with software such as Parallels or Boot Camp. For students at an educational institution, accessing a Windows machine from a server (see, for example, VMWare’s Horizon software or Windows App) is an easy solution for Mac users. Students at my university, DePauw, can log in at virtualdesktops.depauw.edu from a Mac, Chromebook, or tablet (anything that has a browser) to access a Windows machine with desktop Excel (and other Office applications).

Online versions of Excel do not support Visual Basic and other advanced features. Thus, you cannot get full functionality using Excel within a web browser. Do not use Excel in a browser to do the work in this book.

In addition to Windows desktop Excel, you need your brain. This book presumes that you have seen a spreadsheet before. You can open Excel and write a formula that adds cells together. As you will see, however, Excel is much more than a simple adding machine. You will learn how to use Excel in much more advanced ways. In addition to analyzing data and learning many new Excel functions, you will learn how to use special Excel files called add-ins that solve optimization problems and run simulations.

The most important thing you can do as you read this book is experiment. You might find yourself wondering, “What would happen if this cell was 10 instead of 1?” Do not just wonder, change the cell and see what happens! There is deep neuroscience at work here. When you are in control and making up your own questions, you learn best. The beauty of this approach is that everything is alive, and you can make points move and lines shift. Take full advantage. Be engaged.

EXCEL TIP Never settle for passive reading. Always do the steps and experiment as you work, changing things to see what happens.

Finally, if something is not working the way you expect, there are many possible causes. It is always a good idea to close Excel completely and reopen it. Even if this does not fix the problem, slowly repeating the steps will help you debug or describe what is happening.

In addition to generative AI (such as ChatGPT), I recommend these websites for Excel tips, tricks, and problem-solving:

Paths Through This Book

You can read and do the activities in this book in a straightforward way from beginning to end, but you can also skip around. The chapters are mostly stand-alone, and within chapters, the sections are also somewhat independent.

Chapters 2 and 6 are an exception. The former introduces Excel’s Solver add-in with simple optimization problems. The latter chapter covers constrained optimization and introduces elasticity via another add-in, the Comparative Statics Wizard.

While these two chapters are paired together, they are separated in the book to enable the reader to digest the material. Allowing ideas to sit for a while and then dredging them back up is an effective way to learn.

After reading and doing the opening section of Monte Carlo simulation in chapter 3, you can do the remaining sections in any order. They all apply the MCSim add-in to different problems.

The FRED add-in is introduced in chapter 5 on unemployment. It is used again in chapter 7 on the yield curve and chapter 8 on national income accounting.

PED—process, explain, and decide—is embedded throughout the book. Excel is used in different ways to download and organize data, to visualize and communicate results, and to find optimal solutions. No matter the path you take through this book, you will learn a great deal about business analytics and Excel.

Book Website

This book is open access and is distributed through many outlets. If you did not get it from the book’s website, see dub.sh/gbae.

This site has the latest version of the book, along with all of the add-ins and finished files. You should build your own Excel workbooks, but you can always check your work by downloading files and comparing them to yours.

The book website also has an Instructor Resources section with materials specifically dedicated to teaching a course in business analytics.

Visit and bookmark dub.sh/gbae to begin your journey.

License

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Gateway to Business Analytics with Microsoft Excel® by Humberto Barreto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.