Reggie Jackson is known as Mr. October for his prodigious feats on the baseball diamond during crunch time - October. Bill Jelen is known as Mr. Excel for his knowledge about and passion for spreadsheets - particularly Microsoft Excel.

The spreadsheet may seem irrelevant to the YouTube generation but it was the first killer app - the application that made companies go out and buy a PC.

Jelen has gone through the early days of the spreadsheet running Multiplan on his TI99/4A and migrating to Lotus 123 and finally Microsoft Excel.

He has helped thousands of people with average Excel knowledge by turning them into power users who save themselves and their company's countless hours. Through books, speaking engagements and seminars Jelen brings his gospel of Excel to the masses. But it is his website, www.MrExcel.com that he really earns the worldwide moniker of Mr. Excel.

The website is a free resource with hundreds of articles on Excel, daily podcast tips and other features. The main reason to visit is the message boards.

Over 60,000 people have signed up to use the free message boards and about 30,000 questions are answered each year by the knowledgeable Excel community that frequents the boards. Jelen has almost 250,000 answered questions archived on the site.

If you have a problem in Excel or even if you think you know it all, check out the message boards. I guarantee you will learn something new and useful.

In this series of podcasts, Mr. Excel will take us through the history of the spreadsheet, talk about popular and powerful Excel features and weigh in on the new version of Excel in office 2007. And he'll share some of his favorite tips.

Listen to this interview

Listen to this interview

Listen to this interview

Listen to this interview

Listen to this interview

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