Microsoft® Office v. X for Mac Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft)) [Paperback]

WITH KIRK MCELHE TOM NEGRINO (Author)

Book Description

Series: Inside Out (Microsoft) | Publication Date: June 29, 2002

Hey, you know your way around Mac OS X—so now dig into Microsoft® Office v. X and really put your Mac to work! Covering Microsoft Word, Entourage™, Excel, and PowerPoint®, this supremely organized reference packs hundreds of timesaving solutions, troubleshooting tips, and handy workarounds in concise, fast-answer format. It’s all muscle and no fluff. Discover the best and fastest ways to perform everyday tasks and challenge yourself to new levels of Office mastery!

• Build on what you already know about Office and quickly dive into what’s new
• Use Word to produce professional documents and Web pages—and add impact with sound, images, and movies
• Put your e-mail to work, share your calendar over the Web, and use scripts to extend Entourage even further
• Create 3-D charts, hyperlink data, and apply simple to sophisticated number-crunching techniques in Excel
• Deliver compelling PowerPoint presentations and movies in person or over the Web
• Share information seamlessly among Office v. X applications and with colleagues
• Write your own macros and scripts with Microsoft Visual Basic® for Applications (VBA) and AppleScript

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tom Negrino is a book author and contributing editor for Macworld magazine. He began his writing career in 1985 with MacGuide magazine, joining the Macworld ranks in 1987. Tom's articles have appeared in several other magazines, and he has written more than a dozen books since 1994. A frequent speaker at Macworld Expo and other computer trade shows, Tom teaches seminars on Mac and Windows software.

Kirk McElhearn is a writer and translator, and has written and co-written more than a half-dozen books on the Macintosh, covering both software and hardware. As a journalist, Kirk has written articles for a variety of publications, including Macworld magazine and TidBITS.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1028 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 1 edition (June 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735616280
• ISBN-13: 978-0735616288
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,271,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Computers & Technology > Apple > Office Mac

More About the Author

Hi. I've been writing about Macs, other computers, and software since dinosaurs ruled the earth. OK, it's actually been since 1987. I began writing for the late MacGuide magazine, and started writing for Macworld shortly thereafter. I was a Contributing Editor at Macworld from 1990 through 2004, when they noticed that I hadn't written anything for them in the past year (I'd been really busy writing books). We parted on good terms, and I still write for them. Over the years, I've also written for most of the other Mac magazines.

I wrote my first solo book in 1994, and wrote my first commercially successful book in 1997, JavaScript for the Web, Visual QuickStart Guide, written with my then girlfriend and now wife, Dori Smith. That book has been in print ever since, though we've revised it many times to match the growth of JavaScript and other Web technologies. As you can see on this page, I've written or co-written many more books, notably on Dreamweaver, Apple's Keynote, and the Microsoft Office programs.

In late 1999, we moved from the Los Angeles area to the Sonoma wine country. It's a better place to live in general and was a fine place to raise our son. Now that he's grown, it's just us and our very excellent cat, Pixel, who always makes an appearance in each book.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars David Weeks... Book Review, November 21, 2002

By 

Tim E Robertson "Publisher MyMac" (Battle Creek, Mi United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft® Office v. X for Mac Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft)) (Paperback)

So, you have flexed your credit card, and purchased (or upgraded to) Microsoft Office v. X for Macintosh. After all, it is the Mac equivalent of the biggest, baddest, most popular office productivity suite in the PC world. You come home from your dealer, or get the package from the delivery truck driver, and rip the box open, only to find a CD-ROM disk and packing slip.

That's all.

"There's gotta be more," you say, as you rummage around in the suspiciously slim box. Unfortunately, the User Guides that you look for are nowhere to be found. You install the software, and try out the various parts: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage. The on-line Help file answers a few of your questions, but it does nothing to answer the bigger question: "How do I USE this thing?"

Welcome to the Death of Documentation. This phrase, coined by TidBITS publisher Adam Engst, reflects the fact that comprehensive user guides, even for many complex software suites, have become a thing of the past. Paper has been replaced with on-line help. Read the article to get a better feel for the pros and cons of the trend to on-line help.

The yawning gap left by software publishers' failure to provide paper documentation has been well-filled by many book publishers. Buyers spend big bucks to buy software, and then they can't learn how to use it, so they run to buy a book. Tom Negrino, Kirk McElhearn and Kate Binder have the book for you.

Microsoft Office: mac v. X Inside Out is my current recommendation in the Macintosh Office v. X help book category. Covering Word, Entourage, Excel, and PowerPoint, its 975 pages keep it from the "boat-anchor" category (just barely), so you can actually read this from an easy chair. The book is targeted at the Intermediate/Advanced level user, not at the raw Macintosh beginner; it won't tell the newbie how to run a Macintosh. But, if you put this book to good use, you'll have a solid grounding in Office v. X.

A word to the wise: don't feel that you have to read Microsoft Office: mac v. X Inside Out (hereafter referred to as MOIO) from cover to cover, as I did. Users who are upgrading from earlier Office versions will best employ MOIO as a reference book. The excellent index and table of contents make finding particular topics easy, and the material is presented in such a way that small subject areas stand on their own.

My one kvetch with the Word material came from the my reading it from cover to cover, as opposed to using it as a reference to find specific information. I felt the section on Word never really presented the user with the best overall strategy to create a document. Chapter 2 Creating and Managing Documents covers the essentials, but I felt that someone new to Office v. X could use a broader discussion of the ins-and-outs of documents, sections, chapters, master documents, etc, earlier in the book, rather than later.

My experience with the other Office components is minimal, compared to my expertise in Word. Reading the Excel section gave me a great overview of all the powerful features that I never knew how to use. The advanced user will find plenty of detail in MOIO on AppleScripting spreadsheets, and a solid foundation of PivotTable information. The Solver is discussed, but not in great detail.

As I knew virtually nothing about Entourage and Powerpoint before reviewing MOIO, I was glad that I came away with the feeling that I could use the applications after one reading of the book. I might even have to abandon my current calendaring application in favor of Entourage. If I ever get a corporate job, MOIO will help me attain true PowerPoint-jockey status.

While the Office v. X book field is not yet jammed with entries, Negrino, McElhearn, and Binder's Microsoft Office: mac v. X Inside Out will be stiff competition for any new competition. I strongly recommend it for both new Office users, and for upgraders.

MacMice Rating: 4.5 out of 5...

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Way Cool" book, August 6, 2002

By 

Robert Pritchett (Richland, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft® Office v. X for Mac Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft)) (Paperback)

Kirk McElhearn has graciously accepted to work with our MacNut family, so I asked if I could review this Book and Tom Negrino sent it to me (thanks a million Tom!). We do reviews of both hardware and software at http://www.mac-nut.com and a full review of this book will be found there.

Technical books usually take some time to read, but when I got this one, I couldn't put it down until I was finished. No, really! It's that good. My rating for books is based on the number of "dogears" I have put in it after I've finished. I have a lot of dogears in this one.

Kirk said he wrote the Excel section and one of the Word chapters, but I find the whole book to be one of exceptional quality and insight. The writing team really know the product and the Notes, "InsideOuts" and other tips, tricks and workarounds are first rate.

Even though this book provides deep insight into "Office:mac", I see a lot of things I'm eager to try in Office 2001 and Office in the Windows environment - just to see if they work there too.

The Microsofties at Microsoft Press did an excellent job bringing Tom Negrino, Kirk McElhearn and Kate Binder together to bring this tome to light.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Out of Date, February 10, 2008

By 

Coach (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft® Office v. X for Mac Inside Out (Inside Out (Microsoft)) (Paperback)

This is a good manual, but it suffers from one important defect. It was written before Office for Mac 2004 was released and it is a little out of date. It does not cover the new features in the programs and it discusses ways to do things the programs are supposed to do that they do not do anymore.

I looked for something as comprehensive that was post 2004 and could not find it, so this is probably the best you can do, which is better than nothing.