Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been running the MrExcel website since 1998 and have written 66 books about Excel. I am an Excel generalist – I know a fair amount about almost every aspect of Excel. But I respect the specialists who become experts on one part of Excel and offer deep knowledge dives into those portions of Excel. Cleaning data with Power Query, calculating “impossible” calculations with DAX, and then presenting them on interactive dashboards are some of the deep dives that you will learn on this list.


I wrote

Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

By Bill Jelen,

Book cover of Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

What is my book about?

657 Excel mysteries solved. Direct from MrExcel himself, Bill Jelen. If you use Excel 10, 20, 40 hours per week,…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Cleaning Excel Data With Power Query Straight to the Point

Bill Jelen Why did I love this book?

If you just want to find out if Power Query is for you, this short book, written by the entertaining host of the Excel On Fire YouTube channel will show you what is possible using Power Query. Oz will show you the types of everyday problems that can be solved using the Get & Transform section of the Data tab in Excel. Once you get a taste of what is possible, you will be ready to dive in with Ken Puls’ book.

By Oz du Soleil,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cleaning Excel Data With Power Query Straight to the Point as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Author Oz Du Soleil's area of frustration with Excel is cleaning data. From his earliest days with Excel, he has found himself constantly needing to fix names that are ALLCAPS, peel addresses away from phone numbers, and fixing all the many other things that prevent data from being useful. In this intro to Power Query, Oz shows you five core techniques in Excel Power Query: Splitting data, Filling blanks, Joining data sets, grouping and summarizing, and adding columns using Column From Examples.


Book cover of The Absolute Guide to Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Bi: How to Design and Create a Financial Dashboard with Power Bi - End to End

Bill Jelen Why did I love this book?

Kasper DeJonge works at Microsoft on the Power Query team. Before joining Microsoft, he was a data analyst, just like you. In this book, Kasper walks a data analyst through the steps of modelling your Excel data and getting it published on a Power BI dashboard. Along the way, his examples are designed to get you up to speed with the important aspects of Power BI.

By Kasper De Jonge,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Absolute Guide to Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Bi as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Written by a member of Microsoft's Power BI team, this book provides a practical step by step guide on creating a financial dashboard using Power BI desktop and the PowerBI.com service. The book contains 6 chapters:
Introduction. Here I introduce the book, business intelligence and provide some history on Power BI Understanding Dashboards and Report. Here we talk about what dashboards and reports are and how they are used in Power BI. Finally we talk about how to decide what to put on your reports and dashboards. Collecting and preparing data. Here we install Power BI desktop, import data into…


Book cover of Supercharge Power BI: Power BI is Better When You Learn To Write DAX

Bill Jelen Why did I love this book?

Have you ever built a pivot table in Excel? They are great at summarizing data. But they are lousy at answering certain questions. When your manager asks for anything slightly complicated, the Pivot Table Calculated Field is destined to fail. 

The Microsoft team who built the Power Pivot calculation engine realized that Calculated Fields were the weak point of pivot tables. They created an amazing new formula language that could let you answer the hard questions like how are we doing on same-store sales through the first two weekends of December?

The formula language – Data Analysis Expressions – or DAX is powerful but confusing. Matt Allington, another former data analyst has figured out how to use DAX to come up with all of those industry-standard calculations that he used to need as a manager at Coca-Cola. 

He walks you up the DAX learning curve in this book.

By Matt Allington,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Supercharge Power BI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Data analysis expressions (DAX) is the formula language of Power BI. Learning the DAX language is key to empower Power BI users so they can take advantage of these new Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities. This volume clearly explains the concepts of DAX while at the same time offering hands-on practice to engage the reader and help new knowledge stick. This third edition has been updated for the new Power BI Ribbon interface while still providing a bridge for readers wanting to learn DAX in the Power BI, Power Pivot, or Excel.


Book cover of Power Pivot and Power BI: The Excel User's Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016

Bill Jelen Why did I love this book?

Rob Collie was a pioneer at Microsoft. After leaving the Excel team, he helped architect the tools that would become Power Pivot and Power BI. He left Microsoft and started his own consultancy, helping big companies answer important questions in just a few hours with Power Pivot.

His books are the best-selling books in the category. 

While Matt Allington will get you up to speed, Rob will explain every nuance of Power Pivot, DAX, and Power BI.

By Rob Collie, Avichal Singh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Power Pivot and Power BI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Microsoft PowerPivot is a free add-on to Excel from Microsoft that allows users to produce new kinds of reports and analyses that were simply impossible before, and this book is the first to tackle DAX formulas, the core capability of PowerPivot, from the perspective of the Excel audience. Written by the world's foremost PowerPivot blogger and practitioner, the book's concepts and approach are introduced in a step-by-step manner tailored to the learning style of Excel users everywhere. The techniques presented allow users to produce, in hours or even minutes, results that formerly would have taken entire teams weeks or months…


Book cover of Master Your Data with Power Query in Excel and Power BI: Leveraging Power Query to Get & Transform Your Task Flow

Bill Jelen Why did I love this book?

Microsoft quietly slipped the Get & Transform tools onto the Data tab in Excel in 2016. These tools are incredibly powerful – you clean your data once and Excel will remember how to clean your data every month, every week, every day, every hour. Ken Puls and Miguel Escobar will show you all of the best tricks for using these tools.

By Ken Puls, Miguel Escobar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Master Your Data with Power Query in Excel and Power BI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Power Query is the amazing new data cleansing tool in both Excel and Power BI Desktop. Do you find yourself performing the same data cleansing steps day after day? Power Query will make it faster to clean your data the first time. While Power Query is powerful, the interface is subtle—there are tools hiding in plain sight that are easy to miss. Go beyond the obvious and take Power Query to new levels with this book.


Explore my book 😀

Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

By Bill Jelen,

Book cover of Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

What is my book about?

657 Excel mysteries solved. Direct from MrExcel himself, Bill Jelen. If you use Excel 10, 20, 40 hours per week, you will save 50 hours per year with the tricks in this book.

Book cover of Cleaning Excel Data With Power Query Straight to the Point
Book cover of The Absolute Guide to Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Bi: How to Design and Create a Financial Dashboard with Power Bi - End to End
Book cover of Supercharge Power BI: Power BI is Better When You Learn To Write DAX

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,424

readers submitted
so far, will you?