Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office 2003 in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Introduction
  • Who Should Read This Book?
  • What This Book Does for You
  • Can This Book Really Teach Office 2003 in 24 Hours?
  • Conventions Used in This Book
  • Part I. Working with Office 2003
  • Hour 1. Getting Acquainted with Office 2003
  • Part II. Processing with Word 2003
  • Hour 2. Welcome to Word 2003
  • Hour 3. Formatting with Word 2003
  • Hour 4. Managing Documents and Customizing Word 2003
  • Hour 5. Advanced Word 2003
  • Part III. Computing with Excel 2003
  • Hour 6. Understanding Excel 2003 Workbooks
  • Hour 7. Restructuring and Editing Excel 2003 Worksheets
  • Hour 8. Using Excel 2003
  • Hour 9. Formatting Worksheets to Look Great
  • Hour 10. Charting with Excel 2003
  • Part IV. Presenting with Flair
  • Hour 11. PowerPoint 2003 Presentations
  • Hour 12. Editing and Arranging Your Presentations
  • Hour 13. PowerPoint 2003 Advanced Features
  • Hour 14. Animating Your Presentations
  • Part V. Organizing with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 15. Communicating with Outlook 2003
  • Hour 16. Planning and Scheduling with Outlook 2003
  • Part VI. Tracking with Access 2003
  • Hour 17. Access 2003 Basics
  • Hour 18. Entering and Displaying Access 2003 Data
  • Hour 19. Retrieving Your Data
  • Hour 20. Reporting with Access 2003
  • Part VII. Combining Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 21. Office 2003 and the Internet
  • Hour 22. Creating Web Content with Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint
  • Part VIII. Publishing Eye-Catching Documents
  • Hour 23. Publishing with Flair Using Publisher 2003
  • Hour 24. Adding Art to Your Publications
  • Part IX. Appendixes
  • Appendix B. Business Contact Manager and Office Extras
  • Part X. Bonus Hours
  • Hour 25. Using FrontPage 2003 for Web Page Design and Creation
  • Hour 26. Managing Your Web with FrontPage
    • Hyperlinking to Other Web Pages
    • To Do: Use a FrontPage Wizard to Create a Web Page
    • Publishing Your Web Page
    • Introduction to XML
    • XML and Its Impact
    • Office and XML
    • Summary
    • Q&A

Q&A

1. Can you tell me exactly how I can use XML today to improve my Web sites?

   To put it bluntly, no. XML is actually an evolving set of tag-like commands that industries are developing and standardizing upon still and will be for a long time. For now, it's important that you understand the overview of XML and that it enables HTML-like tags to describe your data, not just format your data. Later, when another program or Web site scans your documents and Web sites that contain XML, those sites will be better able to automatically understand the type of content your site and documents hold and don't have to base their assumptions on perfect keyword matches, which is error-prone at best.

2. Should I host my own site?

   If you have a high-speed Internet connection, a very fast second computer that you don't need to use exclusively, and an Internet connection that is set up with a fixed IP address (Internet Protocol address) so when you link a .com domain to your location, that location won't change, you can host your own Web site, as well as charge others to host theirs. But really your work has just begun. You must be completely on top of backing up the server constantly or you could very easily lose your (and your clients') Web data due to an electrical problem (rare) or a hacker attack (less rare). You must constantly update your security to have the latest security patches so the latest hacker breaches don't successfully enter your server's files from somewhere else in the world. You'll need to understand networking protocols deeper than you think you do as well.

   If you're willing to devote the time and resources just described, sure you can host your own site. Many people do just that. Nevertheless, the majority of Web-site owners like the freedom of paying a hosting service a monthly fee and let them handle the hosting headaches. You can then concentrate on what is truly important, and that is the content that you place into your Web site's pages.

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