Author: Stephanie Krieger

Publisher (in conjunction with Microsoft Press): O'Reilly Media (http://microsoftpress.oreilly.com)

Full details of the book available at http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0790145314505.do

Published: April 2011

Print ISBN 13: 978-0-7356-5199-9; ISBN 10: 0-7356-5199-X

EBook ISBN 13: 978-0-7356-5197-5; ISBN 10: 0-7356-5197-3

Formats:

• Paper Book, soft cover, 864 pages
• EBook: epub (for iPhone, iPad, Sony, etc.); mobi (for Kindle, etc.); PDF

Prices:

• eBook $43.99
• Paper Book $54.99
• eBook + Paper Book $60.49

Creating content that stands out

With so much information readily available today, it is vital to produce content that stands out. That is the reason why the book, “Documents, Presentations, and Workbooks: Using Microsoft Office to Create Content That Gets Noticed”, has been written. On the opening page of the book, its author, Stephanie Krieger, a Microsoft Office MVP and professional document consultant, reveals how she has “often been frustrated by the lack of available resources that move beyond ‘click here’ or ‘point there’ to explain why things work the way they do, which best practices can make a real difference to your work, and what tools you may be missing that could simplify your work and expand your possibilities.”

Krieger explains that her book is all about “helping you to put what you already know together with both new and existing methods and concepts to work the way the experts do; helping you create the kind of documents and templates you’ve always wanted; and giving you the tools to take full advantage of the capabilities in these programs to find the simple solutions you’ve often wondered about. In short, it’s about doing less work, getting better results, and expanding your possibilities.” A major attraction of the book is that it is suitable reading for both PC and Mac users of Office, with the respective platforms being Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office for Mac 2011.

Another appealing feature of the book is its sole focus on helping seasoned users of Microsoft Office to get more out of it. If you’re a beginner, look for another book about Microsoft Office to read. As Krieger points out, “you’re an experienced Microsoft Office user and you don’t need to start from scratch. This book takes you at your word, so the basics you already know are not repeated here. Though a few chapters that are specific to advanced tasks (such as Microsoft Excel PivotTables) do start from the beginning and move at an advanced pace, you’ll find far more lists of key tips, hands-on concepts, and advanced timesaving or troubleshooting methods in most chapters than step-by-step instructions for using the basics of a feature.”

The opening part of the book – there are five parts in total – looks at document essentials. Key features of both Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 are discussed, along with information about new features in the respective platforms. A section is devoted to Office Open XML file formats with a view to helping readers learn about the different file types, choose a suitable format, and understand file structure. Krieger has also included a section in this part of the book titled “Understanding How the Office Programs “Think”: Documents 101”. Its purpose is, as Krieger states, to make you “think about the way you approach documents”, and in it, she offers the following three strategies, all of which are designed to “save you time and effort as well as improve your results”:

1. “Benefit by being lazy”. Here Krieger profiles a “lazy operator” who nevertheless still manages to efficiently produce outstanding results. The secret, according to Krieger, is that this operator “doesn’t like to do any more work than absolutely necessary, so she never puts anything in a document that doesn’t need to be there. That, she says, is why she gets along so well with Microsoft Office, and with Word in particular.”
2. “Put less work in = Getter better results out”: This concept is based around what Krieger refers to as “rule number one in Microsoft Office document production: if a task seems cumbersome, there is probably an easier way. When most people run into a software task they don’t know how to do, they usually assume the solution is complicated. In fact, people typically overlook the best solution because it seems too easy to possibly work.”
3. “Use Microsoft Office effectively: choose the best tools for the task”: a common mistake all of us have made at one time or another is to tackle a task with the Office application that we are most familiar with and comfortable using. To stop that from happening, Krieger asks us to consider the following questions: “When you think of documents, do you automatically think of Microsoft Word? Word is certainly the best home for most documents that are predominantly text – usually regardless of the complexity of the layout or graphic elements you might need to include. But do you consider all of your options when you prepare to create a document? More and more, features are available across multiple programs (like new and improved picture editing tools that you’ll find in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel on both platforms). And you’ll often benefit by using multiple programs together for the same document.”

The subject matter of the second part of the book is Microsoft Word. Krieger says that there are six features of Word that “can enable you to create any document you need and how to put the pieces together to create better documents more easily.” Those features are text formatting and effects; styles; tables; graphics; sections; and dynamic content.

Microsoft PowerPoint is discussed in the next part of the book. Krieger makes no secret of the fact she loves PowerPoint, and firmly believes that the program is “cool, powerful, fun to use, and it just keeps getting better.” But she also readily acknowledges that PowerPoint is not perfect either. So in order to present a balanced view of the application, her motivation when writing the chapters in this part of the book was to “show you how to make the most of key features that will simplify your work and give you the power you need to create incredible presentations. They’ll also give you a heads-up about the occasional pitfall.”

Few would argue that Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel are the two most heavily utilized Office applications, and Excel is the subject matter of the fourth part of the book. Examples of the sorts of content that you will read about in this part of the book include treating your workbooks like the documents they are; crunching numbers in Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011; data visualization; timesaving techniques for adding or editing chart data; the reason for using a PivotTable, and how to create one; creating a PivotChart; and the basics of PivotTable and PivotChart reports.

The fifth and final part of the book covers the three topics of templates, automation, and customization, and it has been specifically written for those Office users who Krieger recognizes as now wanting to take their expertise with the software to the next level. The first of three chapters in this part of the book contains advice about the best practices for Word templates, PowerPoint templates, and Excel templates. The second chapter takes an in-depth look at Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and answers the questions of why and when you would use it. And the last chapter in this section, and of the book, discusses the following Office Open XML essentials: XML basics for reading documents; Office Open XML formats; and editing and managing documents through XML.

A bonus that comes with the book is a collection of companion content (the Web address for accessing that content is published in the opening pages of the book). As well as sample files that allow you to work through the different tasks presented throughout the book, examples of other content include the following articles:

• “Securing Access to Your Documents – Document Protection Tools and Options”
• “Should I Consider Microsoft Publisher for My Document?”
• “Visualizing Data with Excel and Visio”
• “Creating VBA UserForms”

In a time when reference information is only a mouse click or two away on the Web, some people may wonder about the need for a book such as “Documents, Presentations, and Workbooks: Using Microsoft Office to Create Content That Gets Noticed”. But when you are under pressure to produce a professional looking article, or a PowerPoint slide show, or an Excel spreadsheet, you probably haven’t got the time, nor the inclination, to trawl the Web looking for that vital bit of technical advice needed to get the job done. In addition, by sequentially reading through the content of this book, you stand a far greater chance of mastering the intricacies of those three major applications of Microsoft Office – Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.