Still the top-selling software suite for Mac users, Microsoft Office has been improved and enhanced to take advantage of the latest Mac OS X features. You'll find lots of new features in Office 2008 for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, but not a page of printed instructions to guide you through the changes. Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual gives you the friendly, thorough introduction you need, whether you're a beginner who can't do more than point and click, or a power user who's ready to tackle a few advanced techniques. To cover Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage, this guide gives you four superb books in one -- a separate section each for program! You can manage your day and create professional-looking documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in no time. Office 2008 has been redesigned so that the windows, toolbars, and icons blend in better with your other Mac applications. But there are still plenty of oddities. That's why this Missing Manual isn't shy about pointing out which features are gems in the rough -- and which are duds. With it, you'll learn how to:

• Navigate the new user interface with its bigger and more graphic toolbars

• Use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Entourage separately or together

• Keep track of appointments and manage daily priorities with the My Day feature

• Create newsletters, flyers, brochures, and more with Word's Publishing Layout View

• Build financial documents like budgets and invoices with Excel's Ledger Sheets

• Get quick access to all document templates and graphics with the Elements Gallery

• Organize all of your Office projects using Entourage's Project Center

• Scan or import digital camera images directly into any of the programs

• Customize each program with power-user techniques

With Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual, you get objective and entertaining instruction to help you tap into all of the features of this powerful suite, so you can get more done in less time.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 16 Ratings

Mostly focused on Word - 2009-07-22
Reviewer Rating:
The first 348 pages of this book are on Word. Then there's 158 pages on Entourage. 132 pages on Excel and then a scant 80 on PowerPoint.

That's too bad--I was mostly interested in Excel and PowerPoint. I use Office pretty heavily--my use of Word is limited to making small modifications to existing documents and sending those documents back to my colleagues.

However, I do a lot of original document creation with Excel and PowerPoint. Altogether, this book weighs in a little shy of 900 pages but only 212 of them apply to me.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about the PowerPoint section is that the first chapter discusses presentation basics that have nothing to do with PowerPoint. I suppose that's not terrible, but there are many better books out there about how to build and deliver a presentation. There's very few if any other books out there about PowerPoint 2008 for Mac. I give a _lot_ of presentations and I was looking for a tool to help me wield PowerPoint better--little tips and tricks to avoid all the clicking, to better link my spreadsheets into PowerPoint, or how to set up my own Quick Theme artwork or best practices of dealing with OmniGraffle figures in my PowerPoint slides...

The book is well written, well organized, makes good use of screenshots--the team did a great job. I did learn a few things from this and I'm sure I will get more out of it in the coming weeks--and at this price, there's no downside even if there is so little information applicable for me today.

Perhaps I am being unfair here, perhaps there really isn't so much to say about Excel or PowerPoint. But I suspect that's not the case--the Missing Manual for the _Windows_ version of PowerPoint is 488 pages. So I would guess more real information about the Mac PowerPoint could have been put into this book.

I'm sure I will find the Word stuff handy one day, and I'm sure many people do spend the bulk of their time in Word. But if you're looking for a definitive guide to Excel or PowerPoint on the Mac, this book isn't it.

Overly Detailed - 2009-02-09
Reviewer Rating:
Extremely detailed in describing multiple operations possible. At times, often hard to find the answer to specific questions, having to pour through pages of (unhelpful) information, only to find the sought after answer inadequate to task. However, it does seem to cover it all, which is important in any manual. It is large and heavy, 800+ pages. Just be aware, maybe consider other options if your needs don't require an all-emcompassing encyclopedic work.

essential reading - 2009-11-04
Reviewer Rating:
"Office 2008 for Macintosh, The Missing Manual" is just that: the manual you should have gotten with the product. They say that MS Word is the most complex program ever, and we've managed to navigate a few of its complexities thanks to this book. It's paid for itself many times over. Plus, some of the writing has a humorous edge that makes all that painful learning more palatable.

Nice book, faster than an internet search - 2009-11-14
Reviewer Rating:
As a reasonably experienced Office 2007 user I was constantly fighting to find solutions to "quirks" with the Office 2008 suite for Mac (i.e., what's the comparable Office 2008 key stroke for F-4 in Excel? Surprise, it's CMD-T). Don't let them fool you, the PC version of Office is much more versatile than the Mac version; but the Mac has more than enough virtues to overcome these deficiencies.

After spending too much time looking for answers on the internet (too many threads ending up in dead ends) I decided to purchase the PDF version of this book. The key information is now available to me quickly in the office and on the road. Time is saved and it's much less frustrating.

This book is well suited to quickly finding answers and solutions with Office 2008. I'm not sure it is as useful as a self learning introduction to Office 2008.

missing manual - 2009-10-30
Reviewer Rating:
excellent book just what a PC user needs when you start using word on a mac

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