From Microsoft Press
Step by Step:
2007 Microsoft Office System by Joyce Cox et alia
reviewed by Les Benson
icrosoft Press has published three books designed to introduce users to the new Office 2007 system.
- "Plain & Simple: ... Just the basics—no jargon, no hassle."
- "Step by Step: Build exactly the skills you want, take just the lessons you need..."
- "Inside Out: Comprehensive in-depth reference for intermediate to advanced users...."
Microsoft also publishes books dealing with individual components of Office 2007, but this review will look at the mid-level book—Step by Step, contained in a "Presentation in a Box" package sent to BB&C by Microsoft Mindshare. The book includes a CD with a searchable electronic copy of the book plus a copy of the Microsoft Computer Dictionary, 5th edition, a short "First Look 2007 Office" book, two posters aimed at internet safety, and "The Windows Vista Product Guide".
The CD books and posters are PDF files, but the "The Vista Product Guide" is an XPS file. The XPS (XML Paper Specification) format was new to me. It turns out to be a product similar to Adobe's PDF. However, you need Vista to read it—or, if you use Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you can download a free XPS Viewer. Details of XPS,
I was pleasantly surprised to find interesting information about Vista in the Product Guide that I had not seen elsewhere. It also contained two links worth mentioning: an early look at Office 2007, and the blog of the Group Program Manager for Excel.
The Step by Step CD also contains sample files designed to reinforce what you can learn by working through the lessons on Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, and PowerPoint in the book. As the lesson files have been saved in Office 2007 file formats, you need a copy of Office 2007 to run them—reasonable, unless you are just trying to decide whether or not to upgrade—in which case, you can get a free filter from Microsoft to read them in Office 2003 (see "Backward Compatible" below).
For a more thorough discussion of the new file formats see Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats. It appears the new format will be an improvement over the Office 2003 file formats. Here are some excerpts (redundant corporate names deleted):
"Robust. The Office XML Formats are designed to be more robust than the binary formats, and, therefore, to help reduce the risk of lost information due to damaged or corrupted files."
"Efficient. The Office XML Formats use ZIP and compression technologies to store documents. A significant benefit of the new formats is substantially smaller file sizes—up to 75 percent smaller than comparable binary documents." [Change the file extension to .zip to examine their content.]
"Secure...You can share documents confidently because you can easily identify and remove personally identifiable information and business-sensitive information, such as user names, comments, and file paths... By default, the new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats do not execute embedded code...".
"Backward-compatible. The 2007 Microsoft Office system is backward-compatible with Office 2000, XP, and 2003...they can continue to use the older .doc, .xls, and .ppt binary formats, which are fully compatible with the 2007 file format. Users of earlier Office versions can download a free update that enables them to open and edit files in the new format from within their earlier versions..."
Notwithstanding the inevitable problems of transition until the new Office file formats become accepted by mainstream users and software producers, these new formats seem like a step in the right direction.
The main content of the CD is the lesson files that support the Step by Step book. However, for me, it was the links and ancillary files in the CD that really made me appreciate this book. While I did receive some help from the book's lessons (I didn't try many), I found the Office 2007 programs intuitive and the new "ribbon" interface a welcome addition. I had to explore a bit to find some functions that weren't where I had expected them but that was not a major stumbling block. The Step by Step book and program files would be most valuable as a self-help course for someone using Office for the first time or for an Office 2007 course aimed at beginners.
Nit Picks
Much as I do appreciate the new expanded options in the Word grammar and spell checker, Word 2007 failed to flag this sentence on page 5 (top, "Tip") of the Step by Step book. "The screens in this book were captured on a monitor set to a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels with the Windows taskbar is hidden to increase the display space." (Either remove the "is" or replace "with" with ". With". The need for human editors has not been replaced yet.)
And the miniscule keyboard "Ctrl" key image on page 157 (another "Tip") is unreadable without a magnifying glass or without drastically increasing the magnification in the PDF version. I cannot blame Word for that, but I really don't understand how the editors missed that.
Conclusions
Thanks to Microsoft Mindshare for helping BB&C understand the opportunities and challenges to adopting Office 2007 with their Presentation in a Box package. It was another benefit of belonging to a user group like BB&C. The Step by Step book is available to BB&C members in our clubhouse library together with another book from the package "Breakthrough! Windows Vista—Find your favourite features and discover the possibilities".
Author Joyce Cox, Joan Preppernau, Steve Lambert, and Curtis Frye
Pages 752
Disk 1 Companion CD
Level Beg/Int
Published 01/17/2007
ISBN 9780735622784
ISBN-10 0-7356-2278-7
Copyright © 1990-2007 by Big Blue and Cousins:The Greater Victoria Personal Computer Users' Association.
www.bbc.org