Others say...

"Disappointing"
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.

"Beware the mistakes"
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.

"Good book crippled by inadequate index"
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.

"A Solid Reference Manual for Your Bookshelf"
This book is another reference manual from "The Missing Manual" series published by Pogue Press. It covers Word, Entourage, Excel and PowerPoint for Macintosh users. Both author's have published many books and/or articles for computer users. The writing is clear and easy to read with enough humorous quips to lighten the reading with a few chuckles. The layout of the book is user friendly. There are enough section headings to make browsing for information easy. There are frequent tips, cautions, notes and figures with good information. Just scanning these would give the reader enough information to start using the software. I find the graphics hard to read, because the print is so small, but there are always clear instructions to take you to the actual computer screen. I always appreciate a book that is written on non-glossy paper as this one is.

The organization of "Office 2004 for Macintosh" is similar to other manuals in "The Missing Manual" series. The Introduction describes what is new and different in Office 2004. It includes some basic information and vocabulary to help people who are new to computers and computer manuals.

The book is organized in sections for Word, Entourage, Excel and PowerPoint. The basic information about the each program is given first, with the information for more advanced computer users in the last chapters. The very last section of the book talks about other miscellaneous features of Office 2004.

One of the nice things about "The Missing Manuals" series is the Missing CD-Rom page at missingmanuals.com. At that website there are three additional appendices to the book. Appendix A is for installing Office 2004 on a Macintosh computer. Appendix B talks about Office Help. (I found printing out a list of the help topics useful.) Appendix C goes over all the menus in Office 2004. (An easy way to get familiar with each program.) There is also and errata section where the authors post errors in the most recent printings of the book. However, I was not able to link to that particular web page.

I was very excited that the book told me how to print up a list of all Word shortcuts. However, when I finished printing, I found the list too large to be useful. I would find a more selective and shorter list of shortcuts compiled by the authors more useful. Perhaps a list at the end of each of the sections could be included in a future edition.

In "Office 2004 for the Macintosh" the authors are not afraid to give their personal opinions about the pros and cons of the software. If there is better software out there for a particular task (i.e., creating websites) they say what it is and where to get it. They also make some sound suggestions about designing websites in general.

In addition, these authors are able to anticipate common mistakes made by the users of software programs. This helped me to avoid some frustrating moments with my computer. For this I thank them and recommend their book to others. It is a solid reference to keep on your shelf.

"Cut the shortcuts"
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.