Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office XP: Microsoft Office Specialist (Certification)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a MOUS Office 2000 Master I have been looking long and hard for a book to prepare me for the Office XP exams. I did not want the expense in having to buy 5 different books as I did for the 2000 exams. This book is exactly what I was looking for. The book covers the objectives for all 5 XP application exams: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access & Outlook and includes the Expert objectives for Word & Excel. What impressed me most about the book was that it focused entirely on the exam objectives and did not waste time going over information that would not be tested. The information is clear & concise and for each exam objective they supplied a Skill Overview, Activity Steps and at least 2 graphical figures. Additionally, there are exercises at the end of each chapter and projects for additional study on each application. The book also contains a glossary for each application and includes a CD containing exercise & project files. I just can't say enough about how much I like this book! I should also note that as per the logo on the front cover, it is MOUS Approved Coureware. Congrats to the Authors on doing such a great job. THANKS!

This book is a wonderful review for the MOS Certification Tests. It covers all the tests - Word (both Core & Expert), Excel (both Core & Expert), Access, Powerpoint, and Outlook. Each section starts with a very basic introduction and steps through all the different tasks that might show up on the tests.

Some of these tasks are very basic (i.e. change the font color) but these tasks will show up on the Core exams so they are covered. The tasks include many less commonly used options such as publishing to web pages, merging documents, and creating macros.

I've worked through the Excel and Access parts and found them to be very well written & easy to follow. I recently passed the Excel Expert test and will be taking the Access test in a few days. I'm confident I will pass it too.

One warning...
This book is NOT designed to teach you these programs. If you are just beginning to learn the Office programs, get a good beginning/intermediate book for each program.
This book is designed to be a REVIEW of material you have already been exposed to or at least heard rumors about - that's how the author was able to pack 5 programs worth of material in one book.

If you want a good review of the tasks that might show up on the tests, this is the book for you.

Learning MS Office XP goes quickly and painlessly with this book. A CD containing files that you actually open and use with the tutorials are included, making it very convenient for the learner to focus on specific objectives in each lesson. Included with the tutorials on Word, Excel, Access, Outlook and PowerPoint are "core" and "advanced" projects you can work on after completing the tutorials in the book. But fair warning - you must have MS Office XP already installed if you want to perform the exercises in this book.

The book is good for a beginning however it has help to remine me of things that we sometimes take for granted as related to the tasks we do every day without thinking how we actually perform them or how a description of such action is worded. It has help refresh and renew my thinking on some things in MS word.I believe this book will enhance and refresh the key points of MS office.

I got this book yesterday to study for the MOSC tests. I'm still only working through the Word section, and keep finding problems with the text. For example, steps that are sentence fragments that don't make any sense, such as "8. to the beginning of a document?" There is no other text to suggest what exactly this step is trying to ask. Also, I have found two references in the first section to images or figures that don't exist. Lastly, there is an instruction to insert a graphic, presumably from the CD, but the graphic doesn't exist.

The authors of this book collectively have many decades of experience with writing and editing books on computer software, yet these very basic mistakes were not caught. As a Technical Writer by trade, I believe this devalues the publication because it is not as useful as it should be. I gave it 3 stars to reflect this.