When we're faced with learning a suite of products like Microsoft Office XP,
it's very valuable to have available a learning tool that allows us to quickly
become familiar with each and every individual product in the suite without
having to purchase an individual book on every program.
Microsoft Office XP -- 8 in 1 is an excellent choice of an overall learning
tool for Office XP suite. It has enough depth to enable the user to get up to
speed with all of the programs, yet is light enough and easy enough to allow
that to be done in a reasonable length of time. Should you need significant
detail on a program, other books are available that will enable you to become
an expert on individual programs, like Access or Word. But, that is not the
audience for this book. This book is valuable both for the beginner and for
the user who is moving from a previous version of Microsoft Office.
Habraken gets the title from the six basic programs comprising Office XP: Word,
Excel, Access, PowerPoint, FrontPage, and Outlook, plus Internet Explorer, and
a section devoted to Office XP itself. Earlier versions of Microsoft Office
were simply a grouping of the basic programs, e.g., Word, Excel, etc., with
some common features such as "drag-and-drop" and the clipboard allowing
you to move blocks of data from one program to another. Office XP has enhanced
these common features plus added "shell" features to make it easier
to use. Consequently, a separate section and lessons are indicated for Office
XP itself. Since Internet Explorer is common to most of these programs, a separate
section is devoted to IE, even though it is not officially a program of Office
XP.
8 in 1
The book is broken up into eight sections, one for each major program. Then,
each section is broken up into individual lessons ranging from eight to twenty-one
per section -- one hundred and fourteen lessons in all. This style allows the
reader to pace himself/herself at the rate of about one lesson per evening.
The lessons are presented in a clear concise way, yet still interesting enough
to hold your attention throughout the book. The book is written in such a way
as to allow the reader to study only one or two sections, to learn only Word
or Excel, then come back another day to study another program when desired,
much as you would with a library of single program books. There are plenty of
graphics (screen captures) to adequately illustrate the lessons and to improve
comprehension of the lesson material.
All in all, this book is recommended as a very good way to learn Microsoft
Office XP at a reasonable price.
Microsoft Office XP -- 8 in 1 by Joe Habraken, Que. 2001. $30
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