Missing Manuals系列书籍的最大优势之一是它们几乎解释了有关其主题的所有内容。他们的口号是“应该放在盒子里的书”，这是准确的。这些书籍中的大多数都是其主题的极好参考书，由显然是专家并且知道如何解释事物的人撰写，以便我们非专家能够理解它们。这些年来，我已经买了好几本这样的书（事实上，在我写这篇文章的时候，办公室里有四本）。因此，当我有机会查看Office 2013：缺失的手册(Office 2013: The Missing Manual)时，我一开始就抱有很高的期望。我(Were)的期望得到满足了吗？让我们(Let)看看这篇评论。
本书的目标读者
与我最近读过的其他一些解释一切的书不同，这本书既针对新手，也针对从以前版本升级的人。这是一件很难平衡的事情，因为必须为新人提供足够的解释，但又不能让已经了解该主题的人感到无聊并走神。我认为，总而言之，作者在走钢丝方面做得很好。作者是南希康纳和马修麦克唐纳(Nancy Conner and Matthew MacDonald)。
该书非常详细地解释了更多人可能使用的Office应用程序： (Office)Word、Outlook、Excel、PowerPoint和Access。还有一些章节对Publisher、OneNote、SkyDrive和免费的Web 应用程序(Web Apps)的详细程度要少得多。有一些对Office 365的简短参考，但如果您想对该版本的(Office 365)Office进行任何形式的全面解释，则需要寻找另一本书。我建议我们最近审查过的Microsoft Office Inside Out: 2013 Edition ，它在解释(Edition)Office 365方面做得很好. 我发现这种方法有些令人惊讶。为什么要解释SkyDrive和Web 应用程序(Web Apps)而不是Office 365？出于好奇，我浏览了亚马逊(Amazon)，看看是否有单独的Office 365：缺失手册(Office 365: The Missing Manual)——但没有。搜索出现了这本书，它对这个主题几乎没有提及。
解释应用程序
五个部分中的每一个都解释了主要的Office 应用程序(Office apps)具有相同的结构：介绍绝对基础知识，主要是为新手设计的（但包含有关 Office 2013 新功能的信息，正在升级的人应该知道），然后是解释基本命令和技能的章节一个人需要知道如何使用有问题的应用程序，并完成多个章节，专门讨论高级用户非常感兴趣的主题。与所有此类书籍一样，这些章节可以按任何顺序阅读或完全跳过，具体取决于读者个人的需要。随着主题从简单到复杂的排列，几乎每个人都应该很容易直接找到书中所需的信息。例如，这里是电子书版本的Word目录。
我决定通过阅读使用Outlook(Outlook)的说明来测试这本书。我在 2000 年左右(circa 2000)的工作中使用过Outlook，不太喜欢它，从那以后就没有碰过它。我很想知道我记得多少，以及这些年来发生了多少变化——以及现在Outlook是否更容易使用，因为微软(Microsoft)已经有多年的时间来研究和改进它。作者首先说Outlook不再只是用于电子邮件，这绝对是正确的。虽然我之前使用过其他一些功能（比如日历，因为我的工作是打印和发布部门日历(departmental calendar)每周）我没有对联系人、任务列表(task list)、笔记或文件夹做太多事情。所有这些功能在Outlook 2013(Outlook 2013)中都明显不同，因此在开始使用该程序之前，我仔细阅读了Outlook章节。(Outlook)我正在复习电子书版本，所以一旦我开始练习，我可以在必要时轻松地在程序和书之间来回切换。
Office 2013：缺少的手册(Office 2013: The Missing Manual)不像其他一些类似书籍那样包含练习文件，但我认为这不是问题。说明非常清晰，很容易一步一步地完成，并且文本穿插了许多有用的提示和提示以及建议，供本书的其他页面参考以获取更多信息。这是一个好主意，并且可以根据读者的需要轻松找到更多信息或继续前进。随着我的跟进，我很快发现如果 (a) Outlook 2000与(Outlook 2000)Outlook 2013一样功能丰富，我会对Outlook有更好的印象(Outlook)(b) 我有一本像这样的书来解释这一切，而不必自己糊弄过去。尽管我在图书馆工作，但那些日子的指导书并没有那么好。🙂
结论
Office 2013：缺少手册(Office 2013: The Missing Manual)在为初学者提供足够的基本信息和为更高级的用户提供有关高级功能的详细信息之间取得了很好的平衡。作者清楚地知道他们的主题，并且可以向几乎所有人解释。在线提供的附录包含大量有用的链接和附加内容。使用我没有更新的Office 应用程序(Office app)对其进行测试，我发现说明易于遵循并且插图清晰。最后，我发现它是我书架的一个很好的补充。但是，要完整涵盖如此复杂的套件，这本书必须很长（电子书版(ebook edition)中有 1051 页，包括 28页索引(page index)) 并且它涵盖的应用程序比许多人需要使用的要多，因此购买特定于应用程序的书籍或不详细介绍高级功能的书籍可能会更容易。
判决
正如我所说，我发现这本书是一本极好的参考书，它解释了任何人(anything anyone)想要了解的有关Office 2013的任何内容。但在现实生活中，并不是每个人都需要这么多细节。值得您花时间从当地图书馆检查这本书，看看它是否适合您。如果您没有时间，请查看此免费章节（PDF 下载）(free chapter (PDF download))，了解一下。
Book Review - Office 2013: The Missing Manual
One оf the Missing Manuals series of books' greatest strong points is that they explain pretty much everything about their subjects. Their slogan is "The book that should have been in the box," and that's accurate. Most of these books are excellent references for their subjects, written by people who clearly are experts and who know how to explain things so that we non-experts can understand them. I have bought several of these books over the years (in fact, there are four of them in the office with me as I write this). So when I was given the opportunity to review Office 2013: The Missing Manual, I started out with high expectations. Were my expectations met? Let's see in this review.
The book's target audience
Unlike some other explain-it-all books I've read recently, this one is aimed at both total newcomers and people upgrading from previous editions. That's a tricky thing to balance because there has to be sufficient explanation for the newcomers, but not so much that people who already know something about the subject will get bored and wander off. I think, all in all, the authors did a good job of walking that tightrope. The authors are Nancy Conner and Matthew MacDonald.
The book explains in great detail the Office applications that more people are likely to use: Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access. There are also chapters that go into much less detail about Publisher, OneNote, SkyDrive and the free Web Apps. There are a few brief references to Office 365, but if you want any kind of thorough explanation of that edition of Office, you'll need to seek out another book. I would suggest our recently reviewed Microsoft Office Inside Out: 2013 Edition, which does a dandy job of explaining Office 365. I found this approach somewhat surprising. Why explain SkyDrive and Web Apps but not Office 365? Out of curiosity, I browsed Amazon to see if there were a separate Office 365: The Missing Manual—and there isn't. The search turns up this book, which says very little about that subject.
Explaining the apps
Each of the five sections explaining the major Office apps has the same structure: An introduction to the absolute basics, which is mostly designed for newcomers (but contains information about the features that are new to Office 2013 that people who are upgrading should know about) followed by chapters that explain the essential commands and skills one needs to know to be comfortable using the app in question, and finishing with multiple chapters devoted to subjects of great interest to advanced users. As with all books of this nature, the chapters can be read in any order or skipped entirely, depending on the individual reader's needs. With the arrangement of topics from simple to complex, it should be easy for nearly everyone to go straight to the information they need in the book. Here, for example, is the e-book edition's table of contents for Word.
I decided to test out the book by reading the instructions for using Outlook. I had used Outlook at a job I had circa 2000, didn't like it much and hadn't touched it since. I was curious to see how much of it I remembered, and how much has been changed over the years—and if Outlook was easier to use now that Microsoft has had years to work on it and improve it. The authors start out by saying that Outlook isn't just for email any more, and that's definitely true. While I had used a few of the other features before (like the calendar, since it was my job to print out and post the departmental calendar every week) I hadn't done much of anything with contacts, the task list, notes or the folders. All of those features are noticeably different in Outlook 2013, so I read through the Outlook chapters carefully before I began to work my way through the program. I am reviewing the e-book edition, so once I started practicing, I could flip back and forth between the program and the book easily when necessary.
Office 2013: The Missing Manual doesn't include practice files like some other similar books do, but I didn't find that to be a problem. The instructions are very clear and it was easy to follow through step by step, and the text is interspersed with many helpful tips and hints and suggestions for other pages in the book to turn to for more information. This was a great idea, and made it easy to find more information or just keep going, according to the reader's needs. As I followed along it was quickly apparent that I would have had a much more favorable impression of Outlook if (a) Outlook 2000 had been as feature rich as Outlook 2013 and (b) I'd had a book like this to explain it all instead of having to just muddle through on my own. Even though I worked at a library, the how-to books in those days weren't nearly as good. 🙂
Conclusions
Office 2013: The Missing Manual strikes a good balance between providing enough basic information for beginners and providing detailed information on advanced features for more advanced users. The authors clearly know their subject and can explain it to just about everyone. There are appendices available online that contain plenty of useful links and extras. Putting it to the test with an Office app that I wasn't up to date with, I found the instructions easy to follow and the illustrations clear. In the end I found it to be a very good addition to my bookshelf. That said, however, to cover such a complex suite this completely the book has to be long (1051 pages in the ebook edition, including a 28 page index) and it covers more applications than many people will need to use, so it might be easier to buy books that are application specific or that don't go into such extensive detail about the advanced features.
Verdict
As I said, I found this book to be an excellent reference that explains just about anything anyone would want to know about Office 2013. But in real life, not everyone will need this much detail. It would be well worth your time to check the book out of your local library and see how well it suits you. If you don't have the time for that, check this free chapter (PDF download), to get a bit of a taste.
