Microsoft Office Essentials

Ronny Richardson

1996 | 480 pages
ISBN: 132623129
$24.95 Softbound print book  

RESOURCES

DESCRIPTION

Many books on Microsoft Office try to cover every feature of the software. You don't use every feature, though. Microsoft Office Essentials simply covers the things you really want to know and skips over all those esoteric features that 99 out of 100 readers never use.

You will learn, among other things, how to use:

Once you get to know Microsoft Office Essentials you'll want to keep it within easy reach of you computer...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR...

Ronny Richardson, now a faculty member at Southern Polytechnic State University, was formerly a financial analyst at a Fortune 100 company where he developed and maintained thousands of spreadsheets, large and small. He has written 20 computer books, including several best sellers.

Sample Chapters

Two sample chapters are available for download.

Chapter 5
Chapter 7

Introduction

If you go to a typical computer bookstore, you will see shelves full of books on Windows, Office, and the various programs within the Office suite. With all those to choose from, you may be asking yourself, "Why this book?" After all, this is certainly not an everything-you-will-ever-want-to-know book about either Windows or Office. The answer is not so much what is in this book, but rather what is not in this book.

What Makes This Book Different

You are not a dummy, you are not an idiot, and you do not need a book written for a dummy or an idiot. You have mastered the really hard stuff in life, like a job, kids, a checking account, and even in-laws. Next to all that, Microsoft Office is a snap.

Most computer books are written by computer jocks who have learned to use dozens or even hundreds of other software packages, and who don't have a clue how most of us learn to use software. They get a copy of a package like Office while it is still being tested and they rush to learn to use it with little or no documentation from the manufacturer. In the little time they have remaining before their deadline, they try to throw everything they have learned together into a book.

With all this frantic rushing, they barely have time to get the book written. As a result, they rarely take the time to think about the typical reader and decide what he or she really needs to know. If you have ever had trouble lifting a computer book because it was so large, then you had a book written in this fashion.

This book is different. I am a college professor and I routinely teach introductory computer courses. As a result, I have a lot of experience teaching new users how to use software. I know what to gloss over and what to spend a lot of time explaining. I also know how to explain it without making you feel like a dummy and without burying you under a mountain of computer terms.

In addition, I have taken my time in writing this book. Many of the other Office books on the shelf beside this one got there first. However, computer books are like a fine wine. The first ones finished are rarely the best ones. I think you will find that the extra time and care that I have taken in crafting this book will make it much more useful to you.

How I Use This Book

This book covers two versions of Microsoft Office, Office 4 and Office 95. Microsoft Office 4 was the last version Microsoft shipped for Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroup. Microsoft Office 95 is the version Microsoft is currently shipping for Windows 95. I am covering them both because there are only minor differences between the two versions.

When I am discussing a feature that is available only in one version, I will use the version number. When the two versions behave differently, I will also use the version numbers. In most other places, I will avoid using version numbers.

The chapters are divided into sections for different applications, as outlined below. Most of you are going to find Word for Windows and Excel to be extremely useful. You use Word for Windows to type documents, such as letters and reports. You use Excel to perform calculations such as producing a budget or managing your stocks. You should plan to spend more time on these two sections. You will also find that they have more space devoted to them than the other sections.

The third major program included with Microsoft Office is Access, a database program. Microsoft Office is sold in two versions, standard and professional. The difference between them is that the standard version does not include Access.

You use Access to store large amounts of data. For example, a business might use Access to maintain its inventory or list of customers. Access is usually used by programmers having experience with database design; it is of only limited use to most users. This is why Microsoft leaves it out of the standard version. For the same reason, I have left it out of this book. This both saves space and reduces the cost of this book.

The fourth major program included in Microsoft Office is PowerPoint. PowerPoint is used to put together overhead slides for complex presentations. Few people use PowerPoint, so it is covered here in less detail than Word or Excel. Nevertheless, there is enough detail to show you how to use PowerPoint to put together some very impressive slides.

Microsoft Office also includes several smaller programs, called applets. These are specialized programs that perform tasks such as printing equations in mathematical papers and drawing organizational charts. The applets are also briefly covered.

How This Book Is Structured

What follows is a brief discussion of the contents of this book:

Part I: Introduction To Microsoft Office

Windows enforces a certain amount of standardization across all programs. Microsoft Office has even more. As a result, once you learn one Microsoft Office program, learning the others is a snap. The following four chapters discuss the features that are common to all Microsoft Office programs:

Chapter 1: Microsoft Office Overview. This chapter provides a historical perspective of the development of application suites and a common user interface, and gives the reader his or her first look at the components of Microsoft Office.

Chapter 2: Microsoft Office Help. Naturally, all the Microsoft Office programs offer Windows-based help. Additionally, Microsoft has expanded the Microsoft Office help system so it can give you daily tips, ask you questions and then do things for you, and give you on-screen instructions on how to perform more complex tasks. This chapter will show you how to use these features.

Chapter 3: Microsoft Office Manager. The Microsoft Office Manager (MOM) program makes Microsoft Office much easier to use by giving you instant access to any Microsoft Office application. MOM was designed specifically for use with Office 4 and is not included with Office 95. This chapter will show you how to use and customize MOM.

Chapter 4: Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar. The Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar makes it easier to use Office 95 by giving you a common method to start a Microsoft Office program, create a new Microsoft Office document, open existing documents, make an appointment, launch the Answer Wizard, and more. This chapter will show you how to use and customize the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar.

Part 2: Word for Windows

Word for Windows is the single most powerful word processing program you can buy. It will do everything you think a word processor should do, plus a lot of things you never thought of. This section will show you how you can use Word for Windows to write quicker, write smarter, and write better.

Chapter 5: Getting Started With Word for Windows. This chapter introduces Word for Windows and shows you everything you need to know to produce a simple document. This includes how to enter the text, save it to a file, reload it from a file, format it, and print the document. By the time you finish this chapter, you will be ready to write simple documents, such as letters, without reading anything else.

Chapter 6: Easier Formatting Using Template, Styles, And Wizards. In Chapter 5, you learn how to perform page, paragraph, and text formatting using the toolbars and menus. If you only use Word occasionally, this is a fine approach. However, if you use Word frequently, and especially if you produce the same types of documents, this approach to formatting is too much work. You end up doing the same formatting tasks day-after-day on document-after-document. There is a better waystyle sheets and Wizards. This chapter will show you how to use both.

Chapters 7: Additional Formatting Techniques. Chapters 5 and 6 cover direct and style formatting. This represents the bulk of the formatting you will perform. The remaining formatting operations are covered in this chapter.

Chapter 8: Tools To Improve Your Writing. Word offers an incredible array of tools to help you improve your writing. These include a spelling checker, the ability to automatically correct spelling errors, a grammar checker, a thesaurus, and hyphenation. Word also has tools that make difficult tasks, such as tables and mail merge, easier. All of these tools are covered in this chapter.

Chapter 9: Other Word For Windows Features. In addition to tools that help you improve your writing, Word offers many other tools. These include the ability to view your document in many different fashions, and the ability to search for text and optionally replace it with other text. These tools are covered in this chapter.

Chapter 10: Working With Long Documents. The most common long document you are likely to produce is a report (business) or a term paper (academics). This chapter will discuss long documents and the features Word has to make them easier to produce.

Chapter 11: Writing A Newsletter. As word processors like Word have gotten more powerful, the number of newsletters being published has exploded. The skills required to create a newsletter include working with frames and being able to insert a graphic image into a file. These skills can help you produce many other types of documents. This chapter will cover producing a newsletter.

Chapter 12: Printing. No one will know how well-written and attractively formatted your document is until they see it printed. This chapter will tell you everything you need to know about printing.

Chapter 13: Customizing Word For Windows. Word gives you a lot of control over how it operates. This chapter will show you how to exercise that control.

Chapter 14: Document Design. Word gives you far more control over the appearance of a document than any typewriter ever could. This additional control demands a new way of thinking about documents. The adjustments you need to make are discussed in this chapter.

Part 3: Microsoft Office Applets

Microsoft Office comes with either three or four main applications, depending on whether you have the standard or professional edition. As you know by now, they are Word for Windows, Excel, PowerPoint, and if you have the Professional edition, Access. In addition to these main programs, Microsoft Office includes smaller, more specialized programs called applets, which are covered in the next two chapters.

Chapter 15: Microsoft Office Applets. The applets included with Microsoft Office have varying degrees of usefulness. As you might expect, if everyone needed these features, they would be included with the main programs rather than being relegated to minor add-in programs. The applets are covered, in varying degrees relative to their usefulness to you, in this chapter.

Chapter 16: Electronic Mail. This chapter provides a brief overview of Mail. If you are not connected to a network, you can safely skip this chapter, as a network is required to use Mail.

Part 4: Excel

Excel is a spreadsheet program, and spreadsheet programs are extremely popular in businesses today. Many accountants and financial analysts start a spreadsheet program when they get to work in the morning and use that same program all day. Other people find spreadsheets useful for budgets, quick analyses, and many other projects. For students, Excel makes it easy to solve problems in statistics, accounting, finance, mathematics, and many other disciplines.

Chapter 17: Getting Started With Excel. This chapter introduces Excel and shows you everything you need to know to produce a workbook. This includes entering data, calculating results, and formatting the worksheet. When you finish this chapter, you will be ready to write a simple workbook for such tasks as balancing your checkbook or preparing a budget.

Chapter 18: Advanced Worksheet Editing. This chapter covers more advanced topics. It shows you how to work with ranges of values, delete and add rows and columns, use search and replace and much more. When you finish this chapter, you will be ready to produce more complex worksheets.

Chapter 19: Performing More Complex Calculations Using Excel. While the techniques covered in Chapters 17 and 18 allow you to create some nicely formatted and useful worksheets, they are limited in what they can do. To unleash the real power of Excel, you need to use its more than 200 functions. These functions perform everything from financial to statistical analyses. This chapter also covers using multiple sheets and using the data from one workbook in another workbook.

Chapter 20: Advanced Analytical Tools. Excel offers a number of advanced tools to help you understand your data. What-if analysis can tell you what happens if you change key inputs. Scenarios can keep track of complex sets of variables. Auditing can tell you which cells are influenced by which other cells. Goal Seeker and Solver can help you find the one "right" answer. These and other tools are explained in this chapter.

Chapter 21: Advanced Data Manipulation Tools. Excel offers a number of tools that turn it into a powerful database program. These tools are explained in this chapter.

Chapter 22: Displaying Your Data With Charts. Excel can produce very attractive charts. Additionally, much of the work is handled by a wizard. About all you have to do is highlight the data to graph and answer the wizard's questions. Even if the resulting chart is not exactly what you want, a few minutes of editing will give you a perfect chart.

Chapter 23: Printing. No one will know how well-written and attractively formatted your worksheet is until they see it printed. Even if you are not going to use a printout of the worksheet in a presentation, you still need to print drafts for review. This chapter will tell you everything you need to know about printing.

Chapter 24: Customizing Excel. Excel gives you a lot of control over how it operates. This chapter will show you how to exercise that control.

Part 5: Using Microsoft Office Applications Together

By this point, you have finished studying two major Microsoft Office applications, Word for Windows and Excel. You have also seen one of the major benefits of Microsoft Office: all programs work the same way. When you finished Word for Windows and moved on to Excel, much of the material seemed like old hat for this very reason.

That alone would be a good reason for bundling all these programs together into a suite. However, there is more to the suite: the programs work very well together. This section will show you how to make that happen.

Chapter 25: Using Microsoft Office Applications Together. This chapter will show you how to use Word and Excel together, capitalizing on the strengths of both to be more productive than you would be using each product separately. While they are used far less frequently as part of a team, the other Microsoft Office applications would work together in the same fashion.

Chapter 26: Microsoft Binder. This chapter will show you how to use the Binder to combine files from various Microsoft Office applications. Binder is available only in Office 95.

Part 6: PowerPoint

Some people call it giving a presentation. Others call it a sales pitch. No matter what you call public speaking, it scares a lot of people. While PowerPoint cannot give your presentation for you, its professional quality slides can help give you the confidence you need to do your best. The chapters in this section are:

Chapter 27: A Simple PowerPoint Presentation. This chapter uses a sample presentation to show you everything you need to know to develop a presentation that combines words and clip art images.

Chapter 28: Expanding On Your PowerPoint Presentation. This chapter builds on Chapter 27 by showing you how to put together more complex presentations. It shows you how to include charts and tables and how to control the behavior of the presentation on the screen.

Getting The Sample Files

I used a lot of sample files to create the illustrations you see in this book. Manning Publications decided not to include these with the book since you do not need them to follow along. In addition, this saves you money. If you would like to obtain a floppy disk containing all these files, then send $6.00 to:

Microsoft Office Disk Offer
Post Office Box 622
Quincy, Illinois 62306-0622

The files will be sent out on one 3.5-inch floppy disk.

Last Notes

While I certainly hope it does not happen and I've done everything I know of to keep it from happening, it is possible that you will get lost at some point while reading this book or you will fail to understand something. If so, please make a note and drop me a line. Tell me what you did not understand and why. If you are too confused to clearly state the problem, then let me know where I started to lose you.

I have a very selfish reason for asking you to do this. I want to keep this book in print as long as there is a market for it. If you help me spot the confusing portions, I can work on them and make the next edition even better. Plus, knowing where I failed to clearly explain something will help me as I write other books. I'll add the usual disclaimer that I can't always respond to individual letters in case I get a surge of letters; however, I have managed to respond to each letter I have received so far. The address is

Ronny Richardson
c/o Manning Publications Company
3 Lewis Street
Greenwich, Connecticut 06830