Skip to main content
Category

Uncategorized

Third edition of Excel Basics In 30 Minutes now available

By Uncategorized

Newton, Mass., February 3  — Publisher i30 Media officially released the third edition of Excel Basics In 30 Minutes: The beginner’s guide to Microsoft Excel, Excel Online, and Google Sheets (ISBN: 978-1-64188-039-8) by author Ian Lamont. The revised edition of the top-selling guide has not only been updated for Excel 2019 (part of Microsoft’s Office 365 suite), but also covers improvements to the Excel online and mobile apps. 

“There has been a great deal of interest in the latest version of Excel,” Lamont says. “And not just Excel 2019 for Windows and Mac desktops. Lots of people access Excel through the mobile apps for Android phones and iPhones.”

Excel Basics In 30 Minutes starts with an exploration of basic spreadsheet concepts, including the desktop, mobile and online interfaces for Microsoft Excel. It also covers formatting, functions, formulas, AutoFill, charts, printing, filtering, and sorting. The guide uses a series of examples that follow a fictional sales team to illustrate how to use the spreadsheet software.

Excel Basics In 30 Minutes 3rd Edition

Almost anyone can use Excel for work, school, personal projects, and other uses.”

– Excel Basics In 30 Minutes

For readers who don’t have an Office 365 subscription, the book includes explanations of how to use two free Excel alternatives: Excel Online and Google Sheets.   

More information about Excel Basics In 30 Minutes as well as online ordering options can be found on the book’s companion website, excel.in30minutes.com. The paperback retail price is $12.99, while the ebook edition is available via Amazon, Apple, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble for $8.99. A hardback edition (ISBN 978-1-64188-040-4) is also available. 

About the author

Ian Lamont is an award-winning technology journalist, author, and publisher, and the founder of i30 Media Corp. and IN 30 MINUTES Guides. His books include Twitter In 30 Minutes and Lean Media: How to focus creativity, streamline production, and create media that audiences love. A graduate of Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he lives in the Boston area with his family.

About In 30 Minutes guides

i30 Media is the publisher of In 30 Minutes guides – “Quick guides for a complex world.” Thousands of readers turn to In 30 Minutes guides to understand mildly complex topics, ranging from genealogy to software. The tone is friendly and easy to understand, with step-by-step instructions and lots of examples. Recent titles include Social Security In 30 Minutes, Acid Reflux & Heartburn In 30 Minutes, and Microsoft Word In 30 Minutes. For more information about the series, visit in30minutes.com.

PUBLISHER CONTACT: info@in30minutes.com, +1 (617) 213-0811

Free resources for family genealogists

By Uncategorized

When we released Genealogy Basics In 30 Minutes last month, we also launched a companion website. This is typical for In 30 Minutes guides—the websites contain additional resources, such as author bios, and free resources such as blog posts and videos. But for Genealogy Basics In 30 Minutes, author Shannon Combs-Bennett and publisher i30 Media wanted to offer something else for free—genealogy forms, which many amateur and professional genealogists use to track their progress and visualize the results.

We are pleased to announce that our free genealogy forms starter kit is now available from the website. It contains a five-generation pedigree chart as well as a genealogy research log. You can see screenshots of the forms below:

Free resources free genealogy forms starter kiti30 Media is not the first publisher to offer blank genealogy forms. A simple Google search reveals scores of free forms, shared by amateur genealogists as well as established giants such as Ancestry.com.

However, one thing we noticed about many of the free genealogy forms is the presentation of information left a lot to be desired. The fields or boxes on the forms were often too small, forcing people to write using tiny script. The explanatory text was also hard to read, owing to “busy” fonts or tiny point sizes.

And then there was an issue of organization. The free forms often left out key information, such as the family group sheet that doesn’t have fields for “occupation” or the inventory logs that don’t ask about the source of a particular record or heirloom. I believe this is an important oversight that can lead to unnecessary headaches down the road when family researchers return to a particular sheet and need more information than was originally recorded.

Working with a professional graphic designer, we tried to correct some of these limitations. For instance, the five-generation pedigree chart (see screenshot, above) contains numbered spaces for people’s names, clearly demarcated from the other details, which allow users to zero in on the names later. The research log has fields that can accommodate two lines of text instead of just one, and asks about website locations where the research may be found.

In addition to the free resources in the genealogy starter kit, we are also offering a paid genealogy forms bundle which includes more than a dozen digital files (PDF and Excel) as well as a paper bundle that is printed on high-quality archival paper. These forms are important tools not only for today’s users, but potentially for the next generation of researchers.

Blank Genealogy Forms Library - 8 PDF and Excel genealogy forms