Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual (Paperback)

by Jim Elferdink (Author)
Key Phrases: master document, object palette, navigation pane, Formatting Palette, Address Book, Project Gallery (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Still the top-selling software suite for Mac users, Microsoft Office has been improved and enhanced to take advantage of the latest Mac OS X features. You'll find lots of new features in Office 2008 for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, but not a page of printed instructions to guide you through the changes. Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual gives you the friendly, thorough introduction you need, whether you're a beginner who can't do more than point and click, or a power user who's ready to tackle a few advanced techniques.

To cover Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, this guide gives you four superb books in one -- a separate section each for program! You can manage your day and create professional-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in no time. Office 2008 has been redesigned so that the windows, toolbars, and icons blend in better with your other Mac applications. But there are still plenty of oddities. That's why this Missing Manual isn't shy about pointing out which features are gems in the rough -- and which are duds. With it, you'll learn how to:

• Navigate the new user interface with its bigger and more graphic toolbars
• Use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage separately or together
• Keep track of appointments and manage daily priorities with the My Day feature
• Create newsletters, flyers, brochures, and more with Word's Publishing Layout View
• Build financial documents like budgets and invoices with Excel's Ledger Sheets
• Get quick access to all document templates and graphics with the Elements Gallery
• Organize all of your Office projects using Entourage's Project Center
• Scan or import digital camera images directly into any of the programs
• Customize each program with power-user techniques

With Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual, you get objective and entertaining instruction to help you tap into all of the features of this powerful suite, so you can get more done in less time.

Why Should I Upgrade to Office 2008 for Macintosh?

Author Jim Elferdink talks about what’s new in Office 2008 for Macintosh. If you’re still using Office 2004, you’ll find some great reasons to upgrade. Jim also fills you in on some cool features that Office for Windows can’t match, and why you may not need to invest in iWork!

What are the best new features that will make folks want to upgrade to Office 2008?
Publishing Layout view. If you use Word to create formatted documents like letters and brochures, you’ll find it so much easier to do now in the new Publishing Layout view than in the old Page Layout view. Publishing Layout view is actually quite similar to Pages; both are very usable. It’s a huge boon for Word people—if you haven’t bought Pages, now you won’t have to!
MyDay. I really enjoy Entourage’s MyDay feature. Assuming you’re not working on a laptop that doesn’t have screen space to spare, I recommend keeping MyDay open in the corner of your screen. That’s what I do! It helps me keep track of my appointments and schedule. If you’ve got appointments every 20 minutes or just a lot going on in your day, it’s great to have it all at a glance. It also helps you remember to go pick up the kids. (And you can feel superior to your Windows friends. There’s nothing resembling MyDay in Office for Windows.) Project Center. Entourage’s Project Center has been streamlined and beautified for 2008, but it’s still very underutilized. It takes a little extra effort to learn, but once you’ve got it up and running, if you’re doing any kind of a project that involves Office documents or even files from other programs, it’s a great timesaver. It lets you keep shortcuts to all these documents, plus email related to the project, in one window. The Project Center makes it easy to categorize email, contacts, notes, and documents. Things don’t get lost, and you don’t have to worry about Mac OS X labels and other ways to categorize things. (Office for Windows also has nothing like the Project Center.)
Formula Builder. In Excel, one of the greatest new features is the formula builder. If you use Excel much for formulas at all, especially more complicated ones, it’s really a timesaver. It helps you get those things created and working much faster than you could do before.
Elements Gallery. The Elements Gallery concept is really great because it carries over from one program to the other, gives the programs a consistent feel. If you’re using a lot of templates or AutoShapes, you’ll find it a quick way to get at all that stuff. You could do all these things before, but it was a lot harder to find what you were looking for.

So, are there any disadvantages to upgrading to Office 2008?
Publishing Layout view can be frustratingly slow on G4 Macs, especially when you’re trying to move layout elements around onscreen. I would only use it on an Intel Mac. The same caveat holds true for PowerPoint; it’s hard to move things around. But the rest of the suite works great on faster G4 machines.
Office 2008 uses the same new, XML-based file format as Office 2007 for Windows. It’s great not to have to worry when someone with Office 2007 on a PC sends you something. Office 2008 can open those documents right up. But now when you send documents to Mac folks who haven’t upgraded, they won’t be able to open them! Once you upgrade to Office 2008, you’ve got to be aware that not everyone else has, and (unless you have a real need to use the XML format) set your Save options (in Preferences) to the older format so there won’t be problems with your attachments.
Then there’s the macro problem. Any macros you wrote in earlier versions of Office use the Visual Basic programming language (VBA), and they won’t work in Office 2008! If you’ve written a lot of macros for yourself, you’ll have to stick with Office 2004 until you have time to rewrite them in AppleScript.

What do you like best about "Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual?"
I’m happy with the way this book turned out. I think it covers everything you need to use this really powerful suite of programs for all your work. One chapter I’m particularly fond of, and which I think is missing from every other PowerPoint book I’ve looked at, is Chapter 15—Planning Great Presentations. It helps you prepare for your presentation and shows you how to use PowerPoint for its true purpose. PowerPoint isn’t doing the presentation—you are. You’re the star of the show! Unfortunately, too many people think it’s the other way around.

Product Description
Though Office 2008 has been improved to take advantage of the latest Mac OS X features, you don't get a single page of printed instructions to guide you through the changes. Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual gives you the friendly and thorough introduction you need, whether you're a beginner who can't do more than point and click, or a power user who's ready for a few advanced techniques.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 911 pages
• Publisher: Pogue Press; 4th edition (March 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 059651431X
• ISBN-13: 978-0596514310
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,660 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This item is part of The O'Reilly Missing Manuals Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good manual--had most of what I needed, August 17, 2008

By	R. Kyle (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

A tip: don't buy manuals for your new software until you have used it for a while. Use 'help' functions built in your software as much as possible. Document your big questions in a list and when you've got maybe 4-5 questions, that's the time to check out the manuals.

When shopping, I pull out every manual I can find for the software and sit down and read. The key aspects of a good technical manual are organization and ease of reading.

Ultimately, I buy the book that answers all or most of the questions I still have after working with the software for a while.

This is a good manual. It's got both a book and an online form. Note the online form is available for free for a limited time, then you will need to pay a subscription fee.

It's not a bad idea at all to have an online version as well as the book:

Online is available if you're traveling and don't have the book in hand.
Online searches can be quicker than the book.
An online version will be updated when new versions of the software come out and/or new issues about the software arise. <Very important>

The downside of this manual--it's got a lot more information than I currently need. It didn't answer the one pressing issue I had about resuming a document at the last edit and both my husband and I searched for that one question.

Still, my very technical husband and I both like the O'Reilly line of software manuals because they tend to be some of the most complete out there. Add in the online versions and you have a book that should last beyond the first blush of software use.

Rebecca Kyle, August 2008

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Microsoft Office 2008 - a good manual, April 28, 2008

By	Pierre (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This is a very comprehensive manual and a most valuable resource for anyone changing over from Office 2003 or 2007 (for PC) to Office 2008 (for Mac), as a manual is needed to assist with the changeover. For me it is particularly useful regarding Word 2008, Excel 2008, Entourage and PowerPoint; I have no need for Messenger. However, as Excel 2008 is a dumbed down version of Excel 2003 (for PC), Excel 2008 is not very user friendly when it comes to manipulating scientific and financial data, especially with regard to graphs or charts. An appendix to the manual, showing how to work around the various problems created by Microsoft in the Office 2008 suite, would be invaluable. With a great deal of difficulty and with much experimentation I've managed to do some of this myself.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thorough BOOk not missing much, July 23, 2008

By	Karin A. Lubin (Arnold, CA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have been greatly impressed by the writing and knowledge of this author. He is thorough in his descriptions and can lead even the most novice or computer illiterates find their way through the book and get some things done on their computer! This is a MUST have book as a resource and useful "buddy" to help walk you though this software. It is even entertaining and can get you to smile!
Highly recommended!