Microsoft Office 97 Professional 6-In-1 (Step by Step Series)

A personal training system teaches the basics of Microsoft Office 97 Professional and Windows 95 easily and quickly, and the companion CD includes practice files and visual clips of the more complicated procedures. Original. (Intermediate)

In a kinder computing era, Step by Step Microsoft Office 97 Professional might have been part of the Office 97 documentation. This book is aimed squarely at the new user of Office and contains a module for each of the Office applications: Word 97, Excel 97, Access 97, PowerPoint 97, and Outlook 97. An additional module is devoted to general Windows 95 survival skills.

Each module spends several chapters teaching basic skills--creating documents, editing, formatting text, and so forth. The Access 97 section is one of the strongest, exploring everything from the creation of simple tables to sophisticated reporting. Throughout the book, the explanations are clear and well illustrated with ample screen shots. A CD-ROM includes all of the sample documents as well as Microsoft Camcorder files that play back animated versions of various editing tasks. Surprisingly, the book spends very little time discussing how to integrate the Office applications. But given that limitation, it does a good job of teaching the basics of the individual Office programs.