How To Do Everything With Office XP, by Laurie Ann Ulrich, will suit the novice Office user through to seasoned users who wish to hone their skills in certain applications. How To Do Everything With Office XP will not literally explain every available feature in Office XP, but it will provide you with a solid grounding and update you on the new features available. It provides coverage on all the applications available within Office XP: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook and FrontPage.

The initial chapters discuss common elements across applications, plus you will discover speech recognition, one of the new features available in Office XP.

Ulrich takes you through a step-by-step process to assist you in becoming accustomed. Another new feature, the Clip Organizer, is also clearly explained.

If you've had little or no experience with Word, Ulrich's personable writing style and clear, simple instructions will quickly ease you into learning rudimentary Word skills to get you started. If you're one of the many people who has never quite mastered tabs in Word, Ulrich provides a comprehensive review on tabs and building tabbed lists.

From here the book moves on to discuss topics such as structuring documents with tables, building and formatting worksheets and working with formulas and functions. Discover the ins and outs of using Access and learn how to build effective presentations through the use of graphics, charts and multimedia. The final chapters of the book deal with email and provide information on how to design a Web page using FrontPage. There are plenty of good tips to aid you along the way and there is good use of screen shots to help visually explain topics.

Nancy Choi