Office 2010: The Missing Manual

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Whether you're new to Microsoft Office or have used it for years, this clear and friendly primer helps you be productive with Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and the rest of the Office apps from day one. Learn what's new in Office 2010 and get a complete, step-by-step guide to each of its main programs, along with details on Publisher, OneNote, and Office Web Apps. With this Missing Manual on hand, you'll be creating professional-quality documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases in no time.

Office 2010: The Missing Manual is a great way to master Office 2010 without having to stock up on a shelfload of books. Packed with illustrations and friendly advice, it's truly the book that should have been in the box.

Learn everything from basic word processing to desktop and web publishing with Word
Use tables, graphics, and videos to create sophisticated Word documents
Manage your contacts and keep track of your schedule with Outlook
Quickly create and edit PowerPoint presentations, and snazz them up with videos and sound
Build spreadsheets, use functions and formulas, and create charts and graphics with Excel
Design databases and manage large stores of text, numbers, and pictures with Access

Six Things to Love about Office 2010

Office 2007 represented an Office revolution, introducing the Ribbon--a screen-top strip of buttons, organized around common tasks, that replaced the unwieldy collection of toolbars found in earlier versions. The Ribbon forever changed the way people worked with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the other Office programs. Office 2010 doesn’t shake things up the way its predecessor did, but it does fine-tune the entire machine and adds some nifty new features. Whether you’re upgrading from Office 2007 or you’re a holdout from an earlier version of Office, here are six things you’ll love about Office 2010:

Customizable ribbon. The Ribbon helps you find the command you want by making common commands visible as easy-to-spot buttons organized into related groups. Of course, no one knows how you work as well as you do, and that’s why you can now customize the Ribbon. Hand-tailor the Ribbon by organizing its commands in a way that makes sense to you. You can add new tabs, create your own groups, add or remove buttons, and more. Never again scratch your head wondering where to find the command you want.

Backstage view. With Office 2010, Microsoft introduces Backstage view, a smart new way to work with files. Backstage view gathers together everything that you might do with a file (as opposed to what you might do to a file): create a new file, open an existing one, save, print, set permissions, or share. In Word, for example, when you’re finished editing a document, you go Backstage to print it or email it to a colleague. You get Backstage by clicking the File tab, the leftmost tab on every Ribbon. Clicking here takes you out of editing view and shows information about the file itself--that’s why they call it Backstage.

Better photo-editing tools. Okay, so Office 2010 isn’t Photoshop--but it was never intended to be. Still, you can add cool effects and edit your photos without having to switch to a photo editor. Crop photos, remove distracting backgrounds, and capture screenshots of open windows--right from Office.

Paste preview. If you’ve ever been frustrated by having to reformat text pasted into an Office file from another source, you’ll appreciate this feature. Paste Preview shows you a live preview of how pasted-in text will look in your document, spreadsheet, or other file. You can switch between paste options to make sure that your work looks the way you want it to.

Protected view. Lots of people think nothing of downloading and opening files that they find on the Internet--even when they have no idea who created these documents. To protect your computer, Office programs open downloaded files in Protected view, showing a read-only version of the file that can’t do nasty things to your computer. If you trust the source from which you got the file, you’re an easy click away from enabling full-fledged editing.

Borrow interface metaphors from the physical world. Lean on users’ real-world experience to create intuitive experiences. People will try anything on a touchscreen, for example, that they’d logically try on a physical object or with a mouse-driven cursor. Besides these practical benefits, using an everyday object as an interface metaphor imbues an app with the same associations that folks might have with the real McCoy--a shelf of books, a retro alarm clock, a much-used chessboard, a toy robot.

Office Web Apps. Microsoft has put its most popular Office programs on the Web--for free. With Internet access and a Windows Live ID, you can work with Web-only versions Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote from just about anywhere. Store your files on SkyDrive, which provides 25 GB of storage space, and work on them whenever and wherever you want. And Office Web Apps makes sharing your files easier than ever before.