Wherever you go, there you are—and wherever you are you’re probably not far from a computer running Microsoft Office. Installed on Macs and Windows PCs, no other program is so enmeshed in the world of business and academia. In most corporations, anyone not using Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is considered an oddball. But Office isn’t just for the office—many home computers are also running Microsoft’s ubiquitous productivity software.

Office has been on the Mac in one form or another since 1985, but it gained greater acceptance with the release of Office 2001, when Entourage debuted—the all-in-one email-cum-personal-information-manager program. Then before the year 2001 was even torn off the calendar, Office X exploded onto the scene with some of the first—and best—productivity programs available for the Mac’s new operating system, Mac OS X. With each new version, Microsoft has not only given Office greater speed and more new features, but has designed the programs to work better together. This continued evolution led to the subject of this book: Office 2008.