Dear Reader:

Thank you for purchasing my book "Financial Analysis with Microsoft Excel, 3rd Ed."  The purpose of this file is to describe the other six files that are contained on this disk.  

The first file, famefncs.xls, contains macros that are used in a few of the book's later chapters (8-11).  The macros are functions that are useful and that Excel does not provide.  They are meant to simplify the calculations that you need to enter.  To use the macros, you merely need to open famefncs.xls.  Do not attempt to use the file, just keep it open and work on your own worksheets.  As long as the file is open, the functions will be available to you.  If you wish to examine the macro code, just open the file and press Alt-F11 to open the VBA Editor.  Each of the macros contains comments to help you understand the functionality of the macro and the logic used to program it.  If you have no experience with computer programming, this will be of little or no use to you.  Please note that these macros are copyrighted by myself, but they may be freely used and distributed as long as I'm given credit for their authorship.

The second file, famefncs.xla, is the same as the previous file except that it is an Excel add-in file.  If you install this file correctly, you can use the macros without having to open famefncs.xls.  To install the file, first copy it to a directory on your PC's hard drive.  Now, open Excel and choose Tools Add-ins from the menus.  On the dialog box click the Browse button and then navigate to the directory where you saved famefncs.xla.  Select that file and then click the Ok button.  The file should now automatically load every time you start Excel, and you will find the macros in the Insert Function dialog box under the User Defined category.  If you don't want it to load, just go to Tools Add-ins and uncheck the box to the left of the file.

The next several files are for Monte Carlo simulation as described in chapter 11.  The most important of these is ExcelSim.xla.  This is an Excel add-in program that does almost all of the simulation automatically.  To use this file you must first install it as an add-in as described above.  The process is completely described in the "ExcelSim 2003 Documentation.pdf" file.  The documentation also has several step-by-step examples of the use of Monte Carlo simulations in finance.  The "ExcelSim2003_Examples.xls" file contains the worksheets described in the documentation.

The other file, P&G.XLS, simply contains financial statements for Procter and Gamble.  This file is necessary for the end of chapter problems in Chapter 5.

I hope that you find the book and macros useful.

Timothy R. Mayes, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Finance
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Campus Box 75, PO Box 173362
Denver, CO 80217-3362
E-Mail: mayest@mscd.edu