Word 2003 Personal Trainer

Review by Suzanne S. Barnhill

by CustomGuide Inc
Published by O’Reilly
1st Edition February 2005
ISBN: 0-596-00936-4
454 pages, $29.95 US, $43.95 CA, £19.95 UK

Once a year, Reader’s Digest tests and rates some of the more popular gadgets advertised in late-night TV infomercials. Some provide a surprisingly ingenious answer to a universal need; others are just stunningly bad. As I read the press release about this book, I found myself wondering whether it would prove to be the Veg-O-Matic of Word manuals or just another overpriced dustcatcher.

The premise of the book and included CD is intriguing. According to the press release, the books in the Personal Trainer series (which also include books on Access 2003, Excel 2003, Outlook 2003, PowerPoint 2003 and Windows XP) “offer all the advantages of working out under the guidance of a qualified trainer” because they “provide short, focused lessons on specific tasks that can be read in any order, depending on your objectives and skill level. The task-specific lessons—or ‘workouts’—are laid out in two-page spreads designed to boost individual learning and retention.” But wait! There’s more!

"Each Personal Trainer comes with an interactive CD that provides a simulated application environment where you can safely flex your developing skills; there’s no need to worry about permanently damaging your preferences, losing data, or any of the other things that can go wrong when you test your skills in the unforgiving world of a real application. Nor do you need to own the application you’re learning. With your Personal Trainer, you can hone your skills in advance for a software upgrade you know is coming at the office or learn new programs in preparation for that career move you’ve been planning to make. And, each lesson is fully interactive, giving you feedback and guidance as you work through the exercises—just like a real trainer."

O’Reilly’s Web site adds:

"As the most complete and engaging tutorial available for Microsoft Word, this invaluable guide can assist users of all expertise levels. You’ll work out with Word at your own pace, adding valuable knowledge and skills with each session, and you’ll never take on more than you can handle with your Personal Trainer next to you….More seasoned Word users shouldn’t feel left out either, as the book examines how to perform mail merges, create web pages, and facilitate document collaboration, among other advanced tasks."

Taken all together, the book’s promotional material seems to promise that:

So how well does it fulfill those promises? Surprisingly well.

The Book

For beginners, the book begins at the most basic level—well, not with turning the computer on, but at least with detailed instructions on how to start Word 2003. Chapter 1, “The Fundamentals,” introduces the Word 2003 UI and includes lessons or “workouts” on using menus, toolbars, and dialog boxes, keyboard and context menu shortcuts, opening, closing, creating, printing, and saving documents, getting help, and exiting Word.

The topics covered in the remaining fourteen chapters are:

Each chapter contains 4–18 lessons or “workouts.” Each lesson gives detailed step-by-step instructions to accomplish one specific task. Interspersed with the steps are Tips that point out alternative ways to accomplish certain things (using menus, keyboard shortcuts, and toolbar buttons), while Notes warn of potential pitfalls. Tables and figures further illustrate concepts. Each lesson ends with a Quick Reference section that summarizes, in large print, the techniques learned in the lesson. Each chapter ends with a review section that includes a summary of what users should have learned in each lesson, a quiz, and a homework assignment.

Note that templates and styles are introduced commendably early (Chapter 6). Moreover, the topics covered include many that get short shrift in some Word manuals: drawing, charts, and WordArt; long-document features such as outlines, tables of contents, indexes, bookmarks, and footnotes and endnotes; and collaboration features such as reviewing (Track Changes), comparing and merging documents, and even the use of a SharePoint site. Also included are mail merge (including IF fields), forms, and document protection, as well as brief lessons on working with other programs (inserting an Excel worksheet, using an Access data base as a mail merge data source, opening a WordPerfect document).

Word experts would probably agree that many of the lessons in Chapter 15 are properly relegated to a chapter on “Advanced Topics.” These include several lessons on macros and VBA. Arguably, customization (including customizing toolbars and changing Options settings) is also “advanced.” But, given their usefulness, I would have liked to see AutoText and AutoCorrect introduced earlier. There are several topics that are not addressed at all: the Equation Editor, the “diagrams” on the Drawing menu, and XML are among these. Perhaps a future edition might include at least the first two topics in the chapter on WordArt and charts.

Although the lessons in each chapter are equally methodical and easy to follow, a reader who completes every lesson and actually masters all the techniques presented will have achieved a level of expertise that will very likely assure that he or she will “become a Word 2003 superhero!” as the cover proclaims. But is this really a book for “seasoned users”? I suspect that even users who know Word well could learn something from this book, but I doubt that many “power users” would have the patience to work through the step-by-step exercises. So, while I would heartily endorse this book for Word beginners and intermediate users, I would suggest that more experienced users might want a reference that offers more depth.

The CD

The CD contains both the Interactive Content and the Practice Files used with the exercises in the book. Users have the option of installing either or both. If the practice files are not “installed” (copied to the hard drive), they can be accessed from the CD. Installing the Interactive Content copies a large number of files to the hard drive, including 12 MB of .swf (ShockWave Flash) files in a folder called Lessons, but, despite appearances, the tutorials actually run from the CD: “Once you’ve installed the interactive content, placing the disc in your drive will cause the program to launch automatically.”

At first blush, the Interactive Content appears to be an audio-visual version of the book. By default, each lesson is read aloud by a pleasant female voice, with sound and video effects (including a conspicuous arrow pointing to each button or menu item to be clicked). An Options selection allows users to disable any or all of these enhancements in order to read the text silently and complete the exercise independently. Alternatively, there is a Presentation Mode in which the exercises are performed in demo mode, without requiring a single mouse click from the user.

In fact, the lessons on the CD are rather pared-down versions of the lessons in the book. The exercises are the same, but the explanatory content is reduced, and the quiz questions are less challenging. On the other hand, a table of contents allows you to select any chapter or lesson in any order and keeps track of the status of each lesson: Not Started, Incomplete, or Complete. To complete a lesson you must view each screen and perform the requisite number of mouse clicks to complete each exercise. You can even print a progress report.

So how useful is the interactive content? It is certainly true that it is without risk. Since you aren’t working in the actual application, there is no danger of “messing up” anything. But there is also no scope or opportunity for doing anything except what the lesson is designed to do, within fairly constrained limits. If you are instructed to click a certain button or menu item, a click on any other button or menu item will not register. If you are told to draw a line from A to B, you can’t draw a line anywhere else. You can’t fail, and you can’t experiment.

Still, the things you can do “feel” just the same as they would if you were actually doing them in Word. And the UI does look just like Word 2003 (assuming that you customarily run Word in a window the size of one quarter of your screen). So the CD would indeed allow prospective users to get a feel for the program at considerably less expense than even the cheapest way to acquire Word (currently Word 2002 as part of Works Suite 2005). And the Presentation Mode is certainly the most efficient way for experienced users to get a quick look at the more advanced topics presented in the book.

Additionally, the interactive version is the only way (short of using Word itself) to get a look at Word’s UI in full color. The illustrations in the book are all grayscale, and because they are limited to half the page width, some of the screen shots are so reduced as to be of negligible usefulness.

About the Author

The “author” of the book is CustomGuide, described as “a leading provider of training materials. Founded by instructors who grew dissatisfied with the industry’s dry course materials, CustomGuide offers courseware (for instructors and students), quick references, to software bulletins and e-learning courses that are fun, flexible, and easy to use.” The result is a style that is friendly and informal and in most cases very clear. And if you want to find the “fun,” check out the “homework” practice files!

Occasionally the book betrays its “committee” origins. I read only a couple of chapters thoroughly and skimmed the rest, but even in the few parts I read carefully, I found quite a few errors, ranging from typos, repeated or missing text, and incorrect references to minor technical errors. In most cases these will not occasion any serious difficulty or cause any permanent confusion for readers, but they do seem to indicate that the book was rushed into production—difficult to understand since Word 2003 is hardly a new product.

Summary

I would enthusiastically recommend this book for the complete novice just starting Word. Although it is aimed at Word 2003, almost all of it would also apply to Word 2002 and much of it to earlier versions as well. The step-by-step instructions and reassuring tone would, I think, be encouraging to even the most timid neophyte.

I would also recommend the book, with reservations, to experienced Word users, especially those currently using Word 2002 or earlier who want to get a “preview” of Word 2003.

I would not recommend the book for expert Word users, even for the sole purpose of previewing Word 2003.

I really liked the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth (and in some cases even the depth) of its coverage, and I thought the concept and organization were very sensible and easy to follow. So is it a Veg-O-Matic? Maybe. If not, it’s at least a Pocket Fisherman.