Office 2004 for Macintosh

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 have never been disappointed by Missing Manuals and this one is no different. Many, many tips are revealed and locating these is very easy. Great book!

Great book for OS X users. You can easily troubleshoot with this book. Saves time and money. Should never have to call for manufacters help again.

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.

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.