The world changes all the time. Technological resources advance at such a clip it seems hard to keep up. But not all technological developments really need shadowing. What we really need to keep up with are developments that help us do the great things we've been doing all along…only more effectively.

Such is the case with spreadsheet applications. New interfaces and bells and whistles appear in each new version. Some are wonderful; however, not all are particularly useful. And sadly, some of the best features often get left behind (I always give as an example the losses in macro writing capabilities and graphical direct-editing we lost after MS Excel 2007 replaced Excel 2003). But that's history. We need to keep looking forward, and where new capabilities replace older ones, we are not necessarily left in the lurch. After all, MS Excel and VBA provide the remarkable ability to be expanded and customized to our particular needs, even in ways that can replicate some of what we loved about previous versions, and even in ways we might expect future versions to automate (but which are not yet in place).

With that in mind, the second edition of Excel Basics to Blackbelt capitalizes on many of the recent developments made available by more contemporary versions of Excel (while retaining a nod to the features of the past). Furthermore, this edition looks forward to capabilities that are not currently standard through the introduction of a series of newly developed Excel addins. The application and description of these are peppered throughout the second-edition text with an aim to augment the text and fill in the capability gaps that were present in the original edition.