Word 2000 In A Nutshell is a book that should be owned by everyone who uses or wants to use Word 2000. It is written in clear and simple language without computer geek terms or references, written so that anyone can understand how to do any of the tasks Word 2000 is capable of performing. The author states that "Word is a tool that is meant to put a host of different features into the hands of people who mainly need to do simple word processing, but also need extra features occasionally."

Most of us know that Word 2000 is a powerful word processor and may know a few of the functions it contains, such as mail merge, envelopes and labels. There are many, many more and this book covers them all, including creating web pages, creating and inserting tables and graphics into documents, writing and using macros and customizing Word 2000 to suit your individual style.

Part 1 of the book contains three chapters:

Chapter 1 - Word Overview
Describes the application in general and shows us how to type, edit and format documents. It includes task lists that cover common tasks and the locations in the book where they are covered in detail, as well as every keyboard shortcut for the tasks to enable us to be more efficient. If only I could remember them! We certainly would retain a lot of them with repeated use and keystrokes are decidedly faster than mouse clicks on menus and buttons.

Chapter 2 - How Word Works
Describes all of the many capabilities of Word, including file management, formatting, templates and document sections, paragraphs, characters and styles. This paragraph alone is a veritable gold mine of information.

Chapter 3 - Customizing Word
This chapter mainly concerns two of Word's powerful commands, Tools/Options and Tools/Customize, in which dialog boxes are opened to provide separate tabs to choose settings and options for documents, pages and command bars.

Part 2 of the book contains chapters 4 through 12:
These chapters cover the complete details of the menus, some are familiar, such as File, Edit, View, Windows and Help. Others may not be, such as Insert, Format, Tools and Table. And I mean complete details, not just a listing and brief sentence describing the actions.

Part 3 of the book - Beyond the Basics brings us to actual tasks as you are walked through many of the things you can do in Word. Chapters 13 through 17 - Cover Collaborating, Templates, Fields and Forms, Web Pages and Master Documents.

Chapter 18 - Working with VBA - Extends Word to use Visual Basic for Applications.

Part 4 of the book - Appendixes Keyboard Shortcuts, Registry Keys, Converters and Filters, and Tip References are included.

As I said before, this book is the only reference you will need to learn how to make full use of Word 2000. If you feel that you already know a lot, this book will provide the source for easy reference to some things you do not or to refresh your memory to accomplish your tasks.