Tag Archives: Microsoft Office

New Excel Book in Progress

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After two months off from writing, I begin work on an Excel book revision.

Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Excel: Visual QuickProject GuideI dove into a revision of my Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Excel: Visual QuickProject Guide book today. I actually got the first chapter — all 16 pages of it — done.

If you’re not familiar with the VQJ (as Peachpit calls it) series, it’s pretty simple. Written for raw beginners, the books use a lot of full color illustrations, large text, numbered steps, and callout lines. Each book in the series is only 144 or 168 pages long — this one weighs in at 144 pages. It’s not the least bit intimidating for any reader.

The first edition of the book covered Excel 2003 for Windows and Excel 2004 for Mac OS. The two versions of Excel are virtually identical, so it made sense to do one book to cover them both. I think I did a good job giving each platform equal space and showing screenshots from both platforms when they were significantly different.

The idea behind the series is to present a project — in this case, creating a budget spreadsheet, duplicating it for multiple months of information, consolidating the months, formatting the spreadsheets so they look good, creating a chart, and printing. All the basics are covered in one project, presented over multiple chapters. The first chapter covers preliminary stuff like interface elements and terminology. The next chapter is where we start creating the spreadsheet.

Creating Resumes, Letters, Business Cards, and Flyers in Word: Visual QuickProject GuideI have two books in this series. This one is doing very well and has been translated into at least two languages. The other book — take a deep breath if you plan to read the title out loud — Creating Resumes, Letters, Business Cards, and Flyers in Word: Visual QuickProject Guide (I had to look it up; I can never remember the title of that book), isn’t doing quite as well. I like to think it’s because people don’t really want to create all those things. But it’s probably because the Word book market is full of titles and this 168-page tome just doesn’t stand out enough on bookstore shelves.

Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Microsoft Excel 2007: Visual QuickProject GuideThis Excel book revision is not cross platform. Tentatively titled Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Microsoft Excel 2007: Visual QuickProject Guide, it covers Excel 2007 for Windows only. (It always amazes me when Amazon.com knows what one of my books will look like before I do.) To write it, I not only had to get my hands on the Office beta, but I also had to get the Windows Vista beta, which my editor wanted running on the computer for all the screenshots. Without Vista, he claimed, the book would look outdated right away. He’s right. And although I wasn’t too thrilled about running beta application software on beta System software, it seems to be working pretty well. Of course, I had to buy a new computer to run all this stuff. My ancient Dell desktop machine would have dropped dead if I tried installing Vista on it, especially with the new graphics-intensive interface. The new Dell Latitude 820 laptop I bought to replace it is handling everything with ease. It should for what it cost me. But with luck, I won’t have to replace it for 4 to 5 years.

Office 2007 is no secret. You can see screenshots and all kinds of training material on the Microsoft Office 2007 Preview site. You might even still be able to download a beta. It’ll run on Windows XP and Vista, so you don’t have to do a double beta like I did to run it.

Over the years, many have complained that Office doesn’t change much with each new version. You won’t hear those complaints this time around. Microsoft has completely reworked the interface. The menus and toolbars are gone, replaced with something called the Ribbon. Click a Ribbon tab to view groups of commands. Click a command to invoke it. Or click a tiny button in the corner of a group to display a good old dialog box.

The new design does appear to be easier for newbies to grasp. But I think it’ll frustrate the hell out of seasoned Office users — at least until they get used to the interface. There’s logic behind it, so if you think about what you want to do, you can figure out where to find the buttons or menus you need to do it. And all the old keyboard shortcuts still work, so if you’ve been using Office applications for years, you won’t be at a total loss in the new version.

Of course, all this has me wondering whether they’ll use the same interface in the Mac version of Office when it gets updated. That would be almost sacrilegious. After all, didn’t Apple invent the interface so widely used by Mac OS and Windows programs? I can’t imagine a Mac program without a menu bar that starts with File and Edit. I guess time will tell.

What’s good about all this for me is that people will need a book to learn the new versions of Office applications. They can’t just use an old Office book to work with the new version. With luck, that’ll help book sales a little. After all, I have to pay for that fancy new computer, don’t I?

Stay tuned for more information about this book as it is completed. It will definitely make it to stores at the same time as Office 2007 — heck, at the rate I’m going, I should be done with it by the end of the month.

Books of 2004

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I bring readers up to date with the titles I churned out over the past year.

I realized, in writing my last blog entry, that the last book I’d mentioned finishing on these pages was my Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart Guide last October. Don’t think for a minute that I’ve been idle since then.

It’s been just over a year and, believe it or not, I had to consult a list of the titles I’d put out to see just what I’d been up to. I just couldn’t remember them all. Here they are:

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide was the most recent revision of my Excel for Windows book. Not much new in the way of content because there’s not much that Microsoft can already add to that feature-packed program. It came out in December 2003.

QuickBooks Pro 6 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide was a brand new title for me (and Peachpit). I’d proposed it early in the year, when I was looking for work and it took several months for them to say yes and come up with a contract. By that time, I had other work lined up. (Feast or famine.) The book underwent a lot of content changes as I wrote. For example, it was originally going to include payroll coverage, but since payroll is done with a separate program bundled into QuickBooks and the future of the bundling was questionable, we decided to drop it. (Frankly, I think payroll is so confusing that a whole book could be written about it, but don’t think I’m volunteering.) The book came out in May 2004 and is doing surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that Peachpit wants me to revise it for the recently-released new edition.

Quicken Premier 2005: The Official Guide is the sixth revision to my original Quicken Official Guide. It was finished in June 2004 and published in August 2004.

Creating Resumes, Letters, Business Cards, and Flyers in Word: Visual QuickProject Guide was a brand new title in Peachpit’s brand new Visual QuickProject Guide series. The series is great for beginners or people with computer phobias because it shows every single step in a process, with callout lines and numbered instructions. It makes a VQS look like a technical guide for MBAs. And it’s in full color! It’s 160 pages long and costs only $12.99. A great deal. The only thing I don’t like about it is the title — it’s way too long! It came out in September 2004.

Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Excel: Visual QuickProject Guide is another brand new book for me. This one offers the basics of working with Excel spreadsheets and charts in a format anyone can understand. It’s eight chapters took me eight days to write and lay out. (That’s not the record. My record is a 350-page book that I knocked off in 10 days back in 1993. Of course, I didn’t do layout for that title.) I think it’s a great book and I’m extremely pleased with the way it came out. Like the Word book, it’s cross-platform. It came out in October 2004.

Microsoft Word 2004 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide is the latest revision to my Word for Macintosh book. It has a bunch of new stuff inserted throughout the book and a brand new chapter covering Word’s new Notebook Layout view feature. I finished it two days ago and it’ll go to the printer today. I expect to see it by the first week in December and, of course, it’ll be at Macworld Expo.

So in the course of a year, December to November, I finished six books. Of these, three were revisions and three were brand new titles. (That’s not a record. My record is 10, set a number of years ago, and I hope I never do that again. Talk about burnout!)

In addition to writing all those books, I also managed the Wickenburg Airport’s FBO (for a short time, anyway), did helicopter tours in the area, got a part-time job flying at the Grand Canyon, and wrote a handful of articles. So anyone who says I have an easy life obviously doesn’t have the big picture.

I’m not complaining — certainly not! I usually take a week or two off between books and spend that time catching up on things like bills, surfing the ‘Net, shopping, and writing in my blog. If I had a helicopter, I’d be flying, but I’m between ships right now and grounded. This week, I’m trying to write three or four articles that I owe various editors. I knocked off one yesterday and started a second one. I’ll finish that and write at least one more today. Tomorrow, my brother, his wife, and my sister are coming in for a week, and my mother and stepfather are showing up on Tuesday for a week, so I’ll spend time with them.

Then it’s back to the salt mines for me. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is on its way and I have to revise the existing book to turn it into Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickStart Guide. I always have the first Mac OS book out in stores and I’m not about to ruin my record this year.

After that, it looks like a QuickBooks revision, but if I’m lucky, they’ll let me write one or two more Visual QuickProject Guides. I proposed a bunch of titles, and they finally seemed to like one of them. Cross your fingers for me. I’m also writing an eBook about iBlog 2.0 for Spiderworks. I’ll probably finish that sometime in December, if I can find time for it between my work on the Tiger book. I’m also working on a book about the Grand Canyon with a photographer and hope to have that ready for publication in May. It’ll be nice to have a book that doesn’t need revising every one or two years. (The Canyon doesn’t change much.) And I’ll always be writing articles. Informit.com likes my work and I like writing for them. FileMaker Advisor also wants me to write for them, but I’m always having trouble coming up with fresh ideas for them, so we’ll see how I do.

That’s it in a nutshell: the past year and the next four to six months. Busy, busy, busy.

Another Chapter Done

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I revise book number 59 or 60 — I’ve lost count again.

These days, I’m hard at work on a revision to my Microsoft Word for Macintosh book. Officially titled Microsoft Word 2004 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide, the book covers the latest and greatest version of Word for Macintosh.

The book I’m revising (which covers Word v. X) is only about 300 pages long. It has a companion book that covers more advanced features. For this edition, I’m rolling the two books into one big fat book. That’s what I did earlier in the year for the Windows version of the book (which covers Word 2003). That book is 450+ pages long.

Revisions are not as easy as they sound. Books in the Visual QuickStart Guide series are extremely screenshot-intensive, with 3-6 images per page (on average). The tiniest little change in Word’s interface requires that any screenshot of that interface element must be redone. Since Microsoft changed the way the ruler looks, for example, any screenshot that includes the ruler — basically any shot of a screenful of text — must be redone. Rather than try to determine what elements have changed and run the risk of missing something, I just redo every single screenshot in the book.

Of course, not only do I write the book, but I lay out its pages using InDesign software. When I’m done with a chapter, I create a PDF and e-mail it to my copy and production editors. They print out the pages, mark them up, and mail them back to me. I then make changes as they requested, finalize the files, and send them to the production person on CD or via FTP. The book is in print 3-4 weeks later. The whole process, from my start to book in stores usually takes 6 to 8 weeks. But as soon as I’m finished with one book and have taken a week or two off to clear my head, I’m starting work on the next book.

I’ve got revisions down to a science. For this book, I’m starting with the InDesign files for the Windows version of the book, which has most of the content I need, organized in the right order. I’ve printed out an outline of that book’s contents with a few Macintosh-only features inserted in the appropriate areas. For example, Chapter 13 will be a brand new chapter covering Word’s NoteBook Layout View feature. Then I open a chapter file and go through it, page by page. I edit the text for correct Mac OS terminology and instructions. I replace the screenshots, removing some completely while adding new ones. I modify all the figure references and caption numbers as needed. (This is, by far, the most tedious part of the revision job.) When I’m done, I have a finished chapter, all ready for review and edit.

I try to knock off a chapter a day. Sometimes, when the chapter is short, that’s easy. Yesterday’s chapter was only 20 pages. But Wednesday’s chapter was 28 pages. That may not seem like a big difference, but it is. This will be a 20-chapter book, so I’ll have it done in 20 working days. If I get two short chapters in a row, I’ll try to do them both in one day to speed things up.

The deadline for this book is roughly around Thanksgiving time. I’d like to get it done sooner, since I have out-of-town guests coming in that week. More important, my Mac OS X book is due for revision shortly. That book takes priority over all others. If it’s ready for revision before I’m done with Word, Word will go on the back burner until I’m done.

I wrote somewhere that I sometimes feel like a machine. When I work on revisions like this one, I do. But I’m a well-oiled machine with the parts worn in just right to get the job done smoothly.