The free guides on this site will take you a long way — but sometimes you want a proper reference on your desk, or a structured book to work through cover to cover. These are three Excel references worth owning, each filling a different need, from a $7 desk card to a complete all-in-one manual.
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Microsoft Excel 365 Formulas — QuickStudy Laminated Guide (Curtis Frye)
At under $7, this is the easiest recommendation on the page. It's a 6-page laminated fold-out — not a book you read but a reference you keep flat on your desk and grab when you blank on a function. The coverage lines up almost exactly with the guides here: order of operations, creating formulas, IF and IFERROR, text extraction, date calculations, lookups, and rounding, all condensed onto a wipe-clean card. That's the whole appeal and also its honest limit — it's a memory-jogger, not a teacher. It won't explain concepts the way a full book (or these guides) will, but for a working reference you can reach for mid-task without opening a browser, it's hard to beat at the price. The author is an experienced Excel trainer, and it's a #1 Best Seller in its category at 4.6 stars across roughly 360 ratings.
Best for: anyone who wants a cheap, grab-and-go desk reference for formulas.
Excel: The Absolute Beginner's Guide (Henry Skinner)
A more Excel-focused pick than an all-in-one Office manual, and a good match if the formula guides here are your entry point and you want to keep going. It covers functions, formulas, and shortcuts with practical examples, and the paperback bundles in extras — video tutorials, a set of templates, and companion ebooks including a "500 Excel Formulas" reference — which stretches the value well past the low cover price. It's a #1 Best Seller in its category with a 4.3-star average across roughly 1,100 ratings. Fair caveat: it's pitched at beginners-to-intermediate, so if you're already comfortable with pivot tables and INDEX/MATCH you may find the early chapters basic — but for building a solid foundation, it's a lot of material for the money.
Best for: beginners who want a structured, affordable path from the basics upward.
The Microsoft Office 365 Bible (James Holler)
If you want one book on the shelf that covers everything, this is the broad pick. It's a beginner-to-advanced walkthrough of the whole Office suite — Excel alongside Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the rest — so it's less a formula-specific manual and more a "learn the entire toolkit" doorstop. That breadth is the tradeoff worth knowing: if you only care about Excel formulas, the two picks above go deeper on that specifically, but if you use the full suite and want a single comprehensive reference, the all-in-one approach earns its keep. It's a #1 Best Seller in its category with a 4.4-star average across roughly 3,700 ratings — a reassuring signal for a reference you'll keep reaching for.
Best for: people who use the whole Office suite and want one comprehensive manual.
Which one should you get?
If you just want a formula reference within arm's reach, the QuickStudy card is a no-brainer at the price. If you're newer to Excel and want to actually learn it step by step, the Beginner's Guide gives you the most structured material for the money. And if Excel is only part of your Office workload, the Office 365 Bible covers the whole suite in one volume.
Prefer to keep learning for free? Every formula and function above is covered in depth in our own Excel guides — no purchase required.