This is exactly what I wrote on Amazon.com as a review for this book.

On the Excel Developer Mailing list that I subscribe to there are many talented and generous people whom freely share their Excel knowledge and experience with others less skilled. Numerous of them are MVP's.

Now when folks like Bob Umlas and Jon Peltier (whom are MVP Excel experts in their own rights) say a book is worth looking at, well, I definitely am keen to check it out.

Bill "Mr. Excel" Jelen and Michael Alexander's book on getting the best out of Pivot tables was recommended to me by Jon Peltier (http://peltiertech.com/ ) and what a great piece of advice it turned out to be.

Pivot table are one of Excel's most powerful features, and yet many users never harness the potential and power of this wonderful tool. I use pivot tables a lot and thought I had a good understanding of them, but this book has taken my productivity to a whole new level. Reading this book and understanding the concepts within has definitely been a "wow" experience for me.

The style of writing is excellent and extensive screenshots and notes make it easy to follow the necessary processes to quickly and painless achieve the desired outcome.

This book covers everything from the history of the Pivot table and data basics, right through to complex tasks involving calculated pivot fields, pivot charts and extracting data from external data sources such as an SQL database or OLAP cube.

Importantly the authors also explain in great detail the potential for risk and data errors and how to minimise the chances of errors being generated. A worthwhile process for anyone using excel.

Actually I loved the way the book was interesting and useful for all skill levels. Even if you had never created a pivot table before this book is very accessable and easy to follow. And for people like myself who are advanced Excel users, there is still an amazing amount of clever techniques to maximise the power of pivot tables.

As a professional excel developer this book has definitely added value to work and (more importantly) to the end products I produce for my clients. A "wow! That is great!" client is a happy client.