As the name suggests, this is a pocket-sized book rather than the sort of encyclopaedic tome that has graced these pages before. (See, for example, my review of the Excel Bible.)

In addition to its handy size, the book has two big plus points. Firstly, it’s well-illustrated, with plenty of screenshots.

Secondly, the chapter titles are written from a functional rather than a technical point of view. For example, one asks “How do I manage lists of information?”, which is a lot more interesting than a chapter title of, for instance, “Filtering”, which might not be self-explanatory to a lot of people.

Although the book has not been written with teachers in mind, it contains information that many teachers would find useful. For example, as well as lists it covers using graphs to present data, conditional formatting, calculating subtotals and other nuts and bolts topics.

I’d have preferred a bit more exposition on the table function, and some of the screenshots are, understandably, too small for the reader to be able to read the detail easily. These points aside, Excel Portable Genius is readable and has clear explanations. It would make a good reference book in your departmental library — once a more permanent return to school is on the cards.

A free copy fo this book was received for review.