Learn how to use Office 2007, Vista and much more.
By Noah Matthews
I may be the only nerd on my block who loves Windows Vista and Office 2007
as much as Bill Gates does. I like the fancy interface, the ribbon, the way menus change.
I especially like the fact that in the nearly two years I¿ve been running Vista and Office 2007
they¿ve hardly ever crashed. My neighbors don¿t believe me when I tell them that.
And they think I¿m nuts as they extol the virtues of Windows XP and Office 97. S o let them live in the past.
There is nothing fancy about the tutorials.
Each one presents a new task, walks you through the solution,
and then immediately tests you to see if you¿ve been paying attention.
You can go back as many times as needed until you master the task.
I¿ve always wanted to know how to total up columns in Excel,
and now I know how easy it is.
Many of the tasks are the kind you would encounter in an office,
but there is no shortage of lessons for folks who are into
creating interesting documents and presentations.
For me, newer is always better, even as I¿ve been known to curse
version 1.0 of countless buggy programs. But beyond the basics, I¿ve never really delved into the features
I brag about to my neighbors, simply because I didn¿t know how. Now I know.
For the past week I¿ve been going beyond the fancy ribbons in the Office suite,
and way beyond the translucent menu bars of Vista.
¿Training Complete for Office 2007 and Windows Vista¿
is a five-CD set of tutorials that has taught me how navigate
everything from the Gadgets in Vista to the ribbons in Office.
Each disc has friendly tutorials that will teach you how,
for example, to total columns in Excel, create tables in Word,
add slides to a PowerPoint presentation, sort and organize
messages in Outlook, create a new database in Access and get rid of that
stupid-looking analog clock on your Vista Sidebar.
There¿s also a tutorial devoted just to creating Web pages.
And, for folks who stubbornly cling to the past, there are tutorials
for Windows 98, 2000 and XP; Word 2000, 2002 and 2003
and similar tutorials for older versions of Excel, PowerPoint,
Outlook and Access.
If that weren¿t enough (this is beginning to sound like a late-night
TV commercial), you¿ll find tutorials for Publisher 2000 and 2003
(but not for the current version), Visio, FrontPage and older versions of
Adobe Photoshop Elements and Acrobat.
The next time my neighbor gets the blue screen of death in Windows 98,
I¿ll tell them about this program, and refer them to Disc 1,
which is all about Vista. I won¿t be smug about it, either. Well, just a little.
¿Training Complete for Windows Vista and Office 2007¿
will run on all versions of Windows.