Customer Reviews

Office 2004 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a big fan of the Missing Manual series. Previous books have given me lots of insights into my installed software and have made my computing time much more efficient. I therefore approached this book with much enthusiasm. Office is such a gargantuan program, with tons of bells and whistles, that Microsoft itself estimates that most users take advantage of less than a third of its capabilities.

However, the book is a major disappointment, because of its many mistakes and poor organization. Most of the mistakes are ones you can work around--for example, on page 8 the topics covered by appendixes A and B are reversed--but the sheer number of such mistakes makes reading the book a major distraction. Every few pages I find myself going to the Missing Manuals web site to report yet more errata, such as incomplete or wrong instructions, figures that do not agree with the text or figure captions, incomprehensible writing, seeming confusion between the Mac and PC versions of the program, etc. And I agree wholeheartedly with a previous reviewer who complained about the inadequate index.

It looks as though O'Reilly Publishers did not do an adequate proofing of the book, but instead rushed it out as soon as possible. That is too bad, because I will now be much more hesitant to purchase another Missing Manuals title.

This is the first book I have read from the Missing Manual Series, and I will look for them in the future. I switched from a PC to a Mac last month and use Office daily. There have been several items I have not been able to figure out in the Office 2004 for Macintosh, but this book has now explained those issues, and introduced previously unknown functions to me. The book assumes one is familiar with Office and targets the changes and upgrades since 2000. This is not a "dummy" book, the five star rating is well deserved in that all concepts are illustrated with screenshots, and explained in prose in great detail. While the book was tedious at times if the material was not new, it was easy to follow when the information was new.
The highlights of the book were the introduction chapter outlining the changes in Office 2004, and the last chapter introducing using Microsoft Office as a Whole with applescripting and the project gallery. I found this book to be helpful to users familiar with PC lingo as well as Mac language. I did not find the usual "Non-Apple bashing" throughout the text, only a few references, but each illustrating the value of a Mac over a PC in this instance of an Office application. There were several examples of how Office 2004 was improved from Office 2003 (PC) and the previous version for Mac.
The new Notebook layout and audio notes were illustrated for student application in Word and the Project Center in Entourage introduces offers space saving ideas for the Mac user. The idea of using Entourage as the Office icon on the dock that allows access to all Office applications, is one improvement I incorporated after reading this book. For users who enjoy Office at home and at work, those who enjoy words just as much as icons, this is the book for you to read. It is a stand alone reference book for those using Office 2004, and a book highlighting the Office applications for those who are considering purchasing Office 2004 for Mac.
The www.missingManual.com is available for those seeking (the missing manual) written information for Office 2004. In each application there are samples illustrating the how-to's of the application, but if it's written words you want, you will have to go to the help files. They are downloadable from the website for printing.

This book was a disappointment. I had expected a reference of the caliber of David Pogue's Mac OS X Tiger manual. Among problem areas: a hard-to-navigate and incomplete index, fuzzy photo insets, and incorrect cross-references. The manual has the feel of something put together in a hurry without proper proof-reading, and borrowing heavily from canned sources. I learned some things but had to work harder to glean the information than I should have. I would not recommend this manual, unless it's the only game in town. I don't think it is.

I was impressed by the other 'Missing Manual' book which I have read, their guide to OSX, and had high hopes for this one. The book itself is quite decent, though not as well written as the OSX guide. However, it is crippled by a totally inadequate index. First, the way in which the index is organized makes little sense -- some Word topics are listed alphabetically on their own, while others are grouped together as sub-entries under 'Word', forcing you to look in several different places. Far worse, the index is simply incomplete, making it difficult if not impossible to look up the answers to specific questions.

For instance, let's say you want to look up how to use all those little triangle widget things on the ruler. There's just one entry for 'ruler' as a sub entry under 'Word' (and none as a stand-alone entry): page 22. Page 22 contains just two lines about the ruler, with the injunction to "See page 116 for details on how to use and change these settings". As it happens, there's nothing at all on page 116 about the ruler, and the reference should probably be to page 130, which contains a discussion of margins. But typos aside, the main issue is, why isn't the page which contains the actual information about how to use the various features of the ruler listed in the index under 'ruler'? This is typical of the grossly incomplete indexing which makes this book nearly useless as a problem-solving guide. The index is simply too short, with only a total of about three pages devoted to all of the Word entries.

The Pogue Press/O'Reilly people should really create a proper index (how difficult can this be to do on a book which was doubtless created in electronic form by people who are presumably intimately familiar with the use of Word 2004) and post it on their website. That would at least make it possible to use the book as a reference source.

Note: the above comments are based on the third of the book devoted to Word. I assume that the same problems exist in the other sections, but I bought the book primarily to use with Word and haven't worked in detail with those other sections.

The best point about the book is its unauthorised nature. Yes, most of the book is about explaining the common and frequently used aspects of each Microsoft Office product. Competently written, to be sure. But realistically, indistinguishable from every other introductory text on this subject.

Instead, the book has numerous tips and remarks that offer the authors' unvarnished opinions on what Microsoft has put before you. Like the AutoSummarize in Word that programmatically pulls out the key sentences in a passage and bung these into a precis. It's a really nifty feature. And elsewhere, there has been favourable discussion about it. However, the authors caution not to get carried away. It's only a rough draft that should be manually edited.

Of course, there are many more examples in the book. But the above is a good instance, due to AutoSummarize's high profile.

Generally a helpful book, but I have grown weary of: here's three cool ways to do something useless. Need software guides written by and for people who use software for real world activities. Need a quick and simple cookbook, not an esoteric gourmet guide or a simpleminded guide for putting pictures of the grandchildren on the Internet.

I purchased Office 2004 for Macintosh with the goal of mastering Excel on my MacBook. Much to my dismay the three chapters on Excel were extremely basic, and failed to even mention such features as "VLOOKUP", amongst others. The summary claims the book is "your complete, authoritative, and entertaining guide".

Unfortunately for this Amazon consumer this book failed miserably to match the book's claims.

A big, heavy book that I wish I could read in bed but it weighs too much on my stomach. It has a lot of stuff and I will use it as a reference when I have a problem converting my old Word 2000 text to the newer 2004. I'm new to the Mac computers.

I am a writer. My publisher asks for the manuscript in word and as a Mac user there are nuances to Office products that I don't know. This book gave instructions that are easily understood. The book both builds on earlier material in the book or one can just look up information individually. A good companion book for MS Office for the Mac.

I found just what I was looking for in this manual. I'm sure I'll refer to it many times when I have questions in the future.