by Douglas Mechaber, LACS

I am reviewing books for Office 2000 because many of these series titles will be available for Office XP, by the same authors, so some of the criticism and analysis will remain valid. For those of you not "upgrading" to XP, Office 2000 titles are still available, with some on the discount shelf at substantial savings at Fry’s or the bookstore that bought the old Crown Books stock. I intended the book reviews to be useful to our Office SIG looking for an Office 2000 text, but because these books were widely distributed, they should be of interest to a more general audience.

The capsule reviews of all of the books below, are listed in approximately the order of usefulness Measuring the number of pages per dollar is another way of measuring the Windows 2000 guide’s worth and leads to only a slight modification of the above order! In Stereophile tradition, one measure of a product’s worth and integrity may be based on the dollars spent per pound. If we were so foolish as to judge that way, the Platinum edition wins, because it is in hard cover and fairly heavy, while the Office CD-ROMs, being only on CDs with no other packaging save the case, would be the loser!

Using Microsoft Office 2000, Special Edition, Bott, Ed and Leonhard, Woody. Que, a division of Macmillan Computer Publishing, Inc. Indianapolis, IN. 1999. 1473 pp. $40, includes CD.

Using Microsoft Office 2000, Platinum Edition, Stewart, Laura. Que, Indianapolis, IN. 1999. 1873 pp. $50, includes CD.

SAMS Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2000 in 24 Hours, Perry, Greg. SAMS, a division of Macmillan Computer Publishing, Inc. Indianapolis, IN. 1999. 494 pp. $20.

Peter Norton’s Complete Guide to Microsoft Office 2000, Norton, Peter, Freeze, Jill T., and Freeze, Wayne S. SAMS, a division of Macmillan Computer Publishing Inc. Indianapolis, IN. 1999. 792 pp. $30.

Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2000, Underdahl, Brian. IDG Books Worldwide, Foster City, CA.1999. 455 pp. $20.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Microsoft Office 2000, Kraynak, Joe. Alpha books, an imprint of Que. Indianapolis, IN. 1999. 330 pp. $17.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Office 2000 is written in a breezy style, with some very clear and useful text call outs. It covers Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Access, and includes a very brief section on Web publishing (although the cover lists FrontPage). This book would be best for the beginner, though there are useful hints in an icon-based format scattered throughout, some of which most advanced users would not know. Given the diagrams, this book is necessarily limited, and is more useful as a tutorial to get up and running with a program, rather than consulting for detailed reference material. Of note is one section on improving how spreadsheets look.

Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2000 has what is probably the best layout design of the books mentioned here. It appears to have been designed by a good graphic artist, and the examples of how to format text and such are exceptionally clear. Some of the skills taught here are advanced, and some very basic, i.e., how to send email. This is the only book with a "money back" guarantee. It is designed as a series of lessons, so rather than teaching basics about how to use a certain program (like a series of mini-tutorials as in the book above), this book teaches you how to perform certain tasks within each program. Each chapter is very short, and contains questions at the end, which are all short answer, encouraging retention. Answers, as well as a glossary, are at the back of the book. This book is very well written and designed.

In Peter Norton’s Guide to Microsoft Office 2000, there are the standard, but annoying, disclaimers and introductory material at the beginning, such as "who should use this book, how this book is organized, etc." This seems common in any book of this size. I usually just skip the first chapter. Some of the call outs are very useful, and present material not found in other books reviewed here. One call out points out the difference between HTML and XML, and why the two different formats are useful, another tells how to change the annoying toolbar to one more to your liking. On the other hand, there is a call out that suggests that saving a file to a Favorites folder (the default?) does not mean that the document is a "favored" document, or that you enjoy playing with Office!? Advanced topics are covered: collaboration on documents, how to do editing changes, and advanced integration, especially with VBA. Most of the emphasis is on Office integration, Word and Excel. PowerPoint is given intermediate coverage, and there are short sections on Outlook and Publisher 2000. This book is best suited as mostly reference material. The editing may not be as tight as Teach Yourself Office 2000, but the purpose is different. Most will not read this book from cover to cover, but instead refer to short sections for help with various Office questions.

SAMS Teach Yourself Microsoft Office in 24 Hours has a series of small chapters that guide you through most of the features in Office 2000. Though not including as much depth as Norton’s guide above, the format, 24 very short chapters, covering most Office basics, is well formatted, with distinctly different call outs. There’s an interesting guide in the front. Since most chapters are discrete and distinct, it is either possible to make your own sequence, or follow the suggested order listed in the front tear out "motivational" sheet. PhotoDraw is covered very briefly in an Appendix, and FrontPage is covered in the body. There are no questions to check your understanding, but each chapter has a summary and a Q and A session of more advanced topics. Though this book is designed as a way to teach Office basics, the introduction claims that it can be used by both the advanced and beginning student – another Appendix describes how to navigate within Windows. Because of the superior formatting in Teach Yourself Office 2000, I prefer that book. The screen shots in Teach Yourself Office 2000 are annotated in a way that helps you remember how to do the task. The difference is that Teach Yourself Office 2000 presents various subjects within the context of a chapter, and Teach Yourself Office 2000 in 24 Hours presents each chapter as a way to learn to use the Office Suite.

I saved the best two books for last, both from Que: Special Edition Using Microsoft Office 2000, and Platinum Edition Using Microsoft Office 2000. With completely different authors, the books have a slightly different look and feel. Special Edition Using MS Office 2000, or SEU, as it’s included CD refers to this series, is impressive. The included CD contains several third party applications for each major part of the package: Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, etc., and many are either full versions or do not time out. Many of the applications are additional templates, but this is useful as they represent a non-MS way of viewing design parameters. The most impressive application is from one of the authors, Woody Leonhard, and lets you customize the places bar in the file open and save dialog boxes. Though you can move things around, this clever utility allows you to change file locations and add your own place names and locations. This program is called WOPR, and is available on the Platinum edition CD as well. Woody maintains an office tip mailing list that will send you free weekly tips on Windows, Office, Access, and so on: http://www.woodyswatch.com Alternatively, send a blank email to woo@wopr.com. Though I occasionally had problems running the CD and Word at the same time, the programs and installations that I tried from the CD worked well.

One of the reasons that SEU is such a great series, and in particular, this book is so good, is because the formatting and use of a second color makes it easy to read and find the specific information wanted. My favorite is the frequent "Tips from Ed and Woody." These are short cuts and additional features that I have not seen elsewhere, and usually, did not know. Other highlighted color bars include Cautions and Notes. The book is divided into 11 logical sections, each comprising one or more chapters. The obvious choices are the sections devoted to Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, and so on, but the first section is an insert describing how to use and install WOPR, and the first book section covers common Office tasks. The next section covers Office and the Web, largely techniques for displaying documents on a web server, and advanced web techniques. The latter sections cover using Macros and VBA for automating Office applications, and Appendices, which include advanced setup options. Unusually, a full page ad for the Tibetan Children’s Fund in the back of this SEU book tells us that some of the book proceeds go to that charity.

Platinum Edition Using MS Office 2000, includes a very similar CD to the one included with the SEU: WOPR, book examples, other SEU chapters, the book itself, and similar third party software are selected by highlighting the CD menu choice. However, additional graphics, templates, and clip art are included in a separate bullet item on the very similar Que CD presentation, and web references are not given.

In addition to Laura Stewart, there are 10 other "experts" who contributed to the Platinum edition. Ten sections comprise 63 chapters. There are the obvious sections on Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, and FrontPage, with the Word section containing 12 separate chapters! There is good coverage of advanced features for the major programs: Advanced Mail Merge, tables, complex documents, etc. featured in the Word section; Advanced Queries, Forms, and Reports featured in the Access section; and importing data from different sources, advanced lists, PivotTables, PivotCharts, and auditing spreadsheets featured in the Excel section. Besides the ubiquitous Appendix, comprised mostly of references, other sections cover supporting Office 2000, an Introduction, and a Visual Basic for Applications Primer.

It is difficult to compare Platinum Edition to SEU above, or to choose between them. Platinum also has frequent Tip and somewhat less frequent Notes sections, and liberal use of screen shots throughout, but Tips are usually more generic rather than specific, and there is no use of a second color to make reading and scanning easier. However, Platinum includes extensive discussion of advanced customization features, including how to apply error bars in Excel charts, optimize Access by altering registry settings, and format and create a table of contents in Word. If you are an expert, like to play with VBA, or support those who do, this advanced book is for you. If you aren’t, but wish to customize various features or documents, without programming, this book is also for you.