Just about anyone can slap together a Word document or fill an Excel grid with numbers, but power users understand how to tap into the full functionality of these applications. Best-selling author Dan Gookin skips what you already know and takes you directly to the best and most useful parts of Word and Excel--the commands, shortcuts, and combinations of functions that will give your creations that extra-added wow factor.

The only book to focus exclusively on these two critical applications, Power Excel and Word teaches you how to harness their power and avoid their pitfalls in one compact volume. By following step-by-step tutorials, you'll discover how to work faster, easier, and smarter. Learn essential techniques you'll use every day, including how to:

• Precisely format a paragraph in Word
• Manipulate drawings and pictures in a document
• Create your own custom tool bars
• Know when to use a table in Word and when to insert an Excel worksheet
• Embellish your documents and reports
• Generate sophisticated charts and graphs by importing Web-based content
• Use styles and templates to save oodles of time
• Protect your documents against unwanted changes
• Employ Excel as a database manager
• Share your work with others
• Produce a list in Excel as a mail merge database for Word
• And much, much more!

Most Office books are boring and quickly go out of date. Dan Gookin takes a uniquely entertaining approach designed to increase your skills, whether you're using Office 2003, Office XP, or Office 2000. And many of these tricks are even effective in Office 97! "