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Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Access 2000 in 21 Days Review by anonymous
Riddled With Errors And Poor Editing
The files on the CD had the read-only attribute set. No big deal; just set the read/write property once it's on your hard drive. However, this indicates the overall problem with this book: very poor editing.
It's as if nobody sat down with this book and worked through the examples before the book went to publishing. Here's why.
1. The aforementioned read-only file problem. Poor editing. Somebody should've caught this.
2. He tells you to save your work with filenames already assigned to other files. If you save your work using his instructions, you write over the solutions to the problems. Not a big deal: just recopy them from the CD. But again, this indicates poor editing. Somebody should've caught this.
3. He gives instructions to perform actions, like generating a report. But the accompanying text is completely different from what you see on the screen. In other words, he has you do something, but from reading the text, what you're supposed to see on the screen, and what you actually see on the screen is completely different. Most of the time, I was able to get by. But there were places (like the Reports chapter) that the discrepancy was so large, that it was impossible to follow along with the text. I had to read through the chapter without following the instructions on the computer.
I have a suspicion that the authors changed parts some of the "follow along" instructions without changing the text that discussed the examples later on.
4. The authors are very fond of using the phrase "And we'll learn about X in the next section". However, it often happens that X was learned in the previous section. It's almost as if they restructured the chapters without making the changes to references where a topic will be learned. Not a big deal. It doesn't hurt your learning. It just indicates poor editing.
The list goes on and on.
I took a brief look at the SAMS Access 2003, which has the same lead author, and the reviews weren't good.
Here's the scoop. The book isn't awful. It has some good qualities. I like the guy's writing style. However, there are SO many books on Access in the market... there are SO many different books to choose from... there is absolutely NO reason to have to settle on a book with such lousy editing. If there were only one or two competing Access books, I'd even give this one a recommendation. The fact is, there are hundreds of books on the subject, and despite the fact that this book does have some good qualities, there's no reason to have to settle for such shoddy editing.