For the beginner a great start

Like all of the Visual Quickstart Guides, this book is peppered with hundreds of screen shots and tips. This easily accessible, step-by-step guide will take you from absolute beginner to being able to use Word very well. The book does not cover the advanced techniques available in Word, but does show you how to use the vast majority of functions and menu options. At the end of the book, you will be able to create just about any document you could think of, even if it is not always done in the most elegant way available in Word - that is to say not using the elegance of the advanced functionality of Word. But in all fairness, this book does not present itself as an advanced tutorial, but as a beginner/intermediate book and in this it does deliver every thing it promises.

The step-by-step instructions are easy to follow and are nicely supplemented by the related screenshots. My one complaint is that there are several occasions in this book where, either because of space constraints, or because the topics broach the territory of advance techniques, or because she wishes you to learn by experimentation, the author will discuss a topic only to tell the reader to experiement with the different option buttons. While this is my one complaint, I did not find this too onerous, since this is how I learned Word in the first place. But for the newbie or faint hearted (when it comes to pressing unknown buttons on a computer) it can be a little daunting. Despite this minor issue the book is a great way to learn to use Word on the Mac and for the newbie or fainthearted, do experiment on practice documents before trying a technique on an important document.

While I have used Word for many years and know many advanced techniques of the application, I am happy to say that I did learn several tidbits that I did not know before. I highly recommend this book.

Other Reviews

• Word 2004 for Mac OS X
• OK for beginners, but
• For the beginner a great start
• MS Word for Mac X