Since you are an Excel power user who also knows SQL, I would highly recommend that you check out the O'Reilly book "Python for Data Analysis." Pretty much the

Since you are an Excel power user who also knows SQL, I would highly recommend that you check out the O'Reilly book "Python for Data Analysis." Pretty much the first chapter just has you very quickly run through examples of using a library of Python called PANDAS. Python is an intuitive enough coding language that you can focus on using it first, understanding it later, since large segments of it will make sense to you off the bat. I could go on and on, but the short order is this: Pandas has an object called a DataFrame which maps 1 to 1 with a sheet from an Excel file. You can pull in two sheets of data from Excel, do merges, joins, iterations, you name it. I am a professional who also "has a job to do", and after two 1 hour sessions in the evening with Pandas, I immediately began using it at work to manage the huge quantity of spreadsheets my team is generating, combined with output from various databases. Anyone who knows SQL will love Pandas, because it allows you to very simply and easily conduct SQL style set logic on data without having any of it in a database.