BKOF97AN.RVW   980102

"Office 97 Annoyances", Woody Leonhard/Lee Hudspeth/T. J. Lee, 1997,
1-56592-310-3, U$21.95/C$31.95
%A   Woody Leonhard woody@wopr.com
%A   Lee Hudspeth
%A   T. J. Lee tj_lee@primeconsulting.com
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   1997
%G   1-56592-310-3
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$21.95/C$31.95 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
%P   396 p.
%T   "Office 97 Annoyances"

At first glance, and read through, something appears to be amiss. 
Office consists of four, or more, applications.  Two of those programs
have already been covered in this series, in books not much smaller
than this one.  If all the Office components are to be covered in the
same detail, why isn't the book that much larger?

You have to examine the work carefully, and even then the answer isn't
glaringly obvious.  The prior books deal with individual applications,
this text deals with Office as a system.  That doesn't necessarily
mean that you don't find tips about specific annoying functions in the
applications in this book: you do.  The choice of annoyances, though,
seems to be informed by those features that are common across Office
applications, or that are particularly important to work done with
Office as a whole, rather than everything that can be done with the
isolated tools.

Chapter one is used to set the stage, and to note additional criteria
for the selection of annoyances.  Chapter two looks at Office as an
entity itself, as well as noting some helpful suggestions for Office
in its larger locale of Windows 95 and NT.

Given that the book deals not simply with the use of Office 97, but
specifically with annoying "features" of the system, it is difficult
to see how even "Mr. Macro" can justify the, not one but *two*,
chapters on macros and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications),
particularly when they occupy almost a third of the entire book.  Yes,
macros are useful, yes, they may even help with some features of
Office that are more repetitive than they need to be, and, yes, we
know, going back as far as "The Hacker's Guide to Word for Windows"
(cf. BKHGTWFW.RVW) that Leonhard loves the programming power of
Microsoft's application "languages," but the initial rationale for the
chapters seems a bit thin.

Two further chapters relate to advanced tasks and topics.  One thing
that shook me in chapter six was the mention of macro viruses.  Yes,
the authors do note that the macro warning dialogue box is *not* an
annoyance and should be left on, and yes, the authors do state that
Microsoft's rather lame attempt is *not* adequate protection and
should be backed up with a real antiviral program.  However, the
statement that older (WordBasic) macros do not run under VBA is
technically true but extremely misleading.  In fact, one of the
features of Office 97 is an autoconversion process for older macros
which, in many cases, does a perfectly functional translation of older
macros and, at first saving, stores them in the new VBA format.

Chapter seven seems to deal mostly with Web related issues, plus one
mention of Outlook as a contact manager.  A very brief list of (still
useful) resources concludes in chapter eight.

As noted, the book can hardly be exhaustive.  You probably will find
your pet peeve listed, but, then again, you might not.  As an
introduction to solving the annoyances of Office this text leaves much
to be desired.  However, as an adjunct and follow-on to the earlier
books it has its merits.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998   BKOF97AN.RVW   980102