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INTRODUCTION

In this introduction

• Who Should Buy This Book
• How This Book Is Organized
• Conventions Used in This Book

Microsoft Office has been around, in one version or another, for more than a decade. We—that is, Woody and Ed—have been writing about Office since the very beginning. In books, on the Web, and in magazine articles and e-mail newsletters, we've guided lost souls through the Office labyrinth, held Microsoft's feet to the fire over bugs and security breaches, and passed out praise for the many innovations that the Office development team has delivered through the years.

In previous editions, we focused on the needs of people using Microsoft Office in the office. For those books, we focused on budgets, annual reports, e-mails from the boss, and other staples of dull corporate life.

This edition is different. Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition is packaged and sold for people who plan to use it at home. Although its individual parts are identical to those found in the Office version used in corporate settings, the day-to-day tasks you're likely to tackle are a little different. That's why, in this book, we've shifted the focus to explain how you can use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to produce school reports, family newsletters, and projects for civic and social organizations. Of course, if you want to use the same technique to sneak in a little work on the weekend, we won't tell.

The audience may be different, but the depth of our coverage hasn't changed. We still assume you're smart, curious, and able to figure out the truly basic stuff on your own. We show you how to use and customize the common parts of Office 2003—toolbars, task panes, and other interface elements—so that when you learn how to customize one Office program you can transfer the same skills to others.

Office 2003 still has odd inconsistencies, as well as bugs, features that don't work as advertised, and basic interface elements guaranteed to drive expert users crazy. But as we researched the third edition of this book, we were pleasantly surprised to see how many longtime Office annoyances have finally been fixed. Office 2003 isn't perfect—not by a long shot—but it is indisputably the most stable, usable, and productive version we've ever worked with.

Some of what you see in Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003 will be familiar to you if you've worked with an earlier edition of this book. We've gone through every chapter, sentence by sentence, testing, verifying, updating, revising, and adding a wealth of new information to ensure that this book is accurate and absolutely up to date.

Who Should Buy This Book

If you need an Office 2003 reference book you can rely on—one that won't bore you with the obvious, pull punches when Office comes up short, or turn mealy-mouthed when you hit the really hard parts—you have the right book in your hands.

As with other titles in Que's best-selling Special Edition Using series, this book focuses on the unique needs of students, teachers, and anyone using Office 2003 at home. We assume you're experienced with Windows, the Web, and, for the most part, previous versions of Microsoft Office. If you're like most people, you've probably only scratched the surface of the capabilities in Office and you'd like to learn a lot more without taking a graduate course on the software. We're also certain you've experienced your fair share of Office bugs and annoyances firsthand. Because we're confident you've already figured out the basics, we've spent our time figuring out how these programs really work. Trust us—Office still has bugs and poorly designed features, and Microsoft doesn't always make it easy to see how you can combine features or customize applications to increase productivity.

We figure you're smart enough to experiment with basic features and to read the online help when you want to know how an Office program is supposed to work. That's why you won't find beginner-level instructions in this book. Instead, you'll find what isn't in the official documentation—key details, insight, and real-world advice you can't find anywhere else. And it's all arranged so that you can get in, find the answer you need, apply it to your work at hand, and get out. This book may weigh a ton, but if you need the straight scoop on anything related to Office, this is where you should look first.

How This Book Is Organized

Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2003 is organized into six parts. Naturally, each of the major applications in the Office suite gets its own section. Before diving into specific features of Outlook, Word, Excel, and the rest, however, we recommend you read through the sections that cover the techniques common to all applications.

Part I, "Common Tasks and Features," covers the essentials of Office, including techniques you can use to transform the Office interface into your own personal productivity center. For instance, we show you how to customize the Office Open and Save As dialog boxes so that you can find your working files with the fewest possible clicks. This section also covers Office 2003's stellar graphics and document-scanning tools. Clippit, the annoying Office Assistant, has been downgraded to bit-player status in this version; if the pesky paper clip somehow survived the upgrade process on your computer, we show you how to make it disappear, permanently, in Chapter 1.

With each succeeding version, Outlook 2003 gets a sweeping makeover, and this one is no exception. Its roster of new features includes a revamped (but still sometimes overwhelming) interface you can use to tie together contacts, calendars, tasks, and e-mail. In Part II, "Using Outlook," we help you tame the flood of e-mail, banish spam forever with Outlook's new and surprisingly effective junk-mail filter, keep your address book up to date, and set up reminders so that you never miss another appointment.

Part III, "Using Word," covers the oldest and most polished productivity application in Office. We walk you through every customization option (including a few you probably never even knew you needed). We also show you how to supercharge your text-editing and formatting skills, how to manage long documents, and how to automate everyday documents so that they practically write themselves.

Part IV, "Using Excel," shows you tricks you never realized you could perform with this incredibly versatile tool. Check out the examples in our formatting chapters to see how you can turn drab rows and columns into eye-catching data graphics. We explain how to master any of Excel's 300+ functions, as well as which ones are worth memorizing. We'll show you how to use PivotTables (and their graphic cousins, PivotCharts) to give you a completely different view of data. Do you have a list of names, addresses, or other information? We also show you how to use the effective new list editing tools to sort, filter, and organize lists like an expert.

Of all the Office applications, PowerPoint is probably the least appreciated. In Part V, "Using PowerPoint," we explain how this program really works, and we help you create compelling presentations that you can deliver in front of a large audience or a small one—or completely unattended over the Web.

In Part VI, "Advanced Tasks and Features," we focus on ways to extend the capabilities of Office. We explain how to automate Office with macros written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). We also explain how you can create, edit, and publish sophisticated web pages without having to tangle with HTML tags. And in the final chapter, we introduce a few features that you'll need to know if you use Office on a portable computer, especially a Tablet PC.

Conventions Used in This Book

Special conventions are used to help you get the most from this book and from Office 2003.

Text Conventions

Various typefaces in this book identify terms and other special objects. These special typefaces include the following:

Type

Meaning

Italic

New terms or phrases when initially defined. An italic term followed by a page number indicates the page where that term is first defined.

Monospace

Information that you type, Web addresses, or onscreen messages.

UPPERCASE

Typically used to indicate Excel objects, such as functions and cell references.

Initial Caps

Menus, dialog box names, dialog box elements, and commands are capitalized.

Key combinations are represented with a plus sign. For example, if the text calls for you to enter Ctrl+S, you would press the Ctrl key and the S key at the same time.

Secrets of the Office Masters

While using Office, you'll find many features that work well together or others that simply don't work well at all without some poking and prodding. We've used this chapter-ending element to point out some key areas in which you can combine features or find startlingly productive new uses for everyday features.

Special Elements

Throughout this book, you'll find Tips, Notes, Cautions, Sidebars, Cross References, and Troubleshooting Tips. These elements provide a variety of information, ranging from warnings you shouldn't miss to ancillary information that will enrich your Office experience, but isn't required reading.

Ed and Woody's "Signature" Tips

Tip - Tips are designed to point out features, annoyances, and tricks of the trade that you might otherwise miss. These aren't wimpy, run-of-the-mill tips that you learned the first week you used Office and don't need us to tell you. Watch for our signatures on the tips to indicate some industrial-strength—and in many cases never-before-documented—information.

Notes

Note - Notes point out items that you should be aware of, although you can skip these if you're in a hurry. Generally, we've added notes as a way to give you some extra information on a topic without weighing you down.

Cautions

Caution - Pay attention to Cautions! These could save you precious hours in lost work. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Troubleshooting Notes

We designed these elements to call attention to common pitfalls that you're likely to encounter. When you see a Troubleshooting note, you can flip to the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of the chapter to learn how to solve or avoid a problem.

Cross References

Cross references are designed to point you to other locations in this book (or other books in the Que family) that will provide supplemental or supporting information. Cross references appear as follows:

→ For a full discussion of the wonders of PivotTables, see "How PivotTable and PivotChart Reports Work."

Sidebars

Want to Know More?

Sidebars are designed to provide information that is ancillary to the topic being discussed. Read these if you want to learn more about an application or task.

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