The title of my post refers to the basic concept behind the In 90 Pages books. I’ve been teaching, lecturing, promoting, and using Microsoft Office since 1995 (Office 95, aka Office 7). I’ve written many textbooks more than 400 pages in length, and they served their purpose. But now I’m meeting more and more students who haven’t been able to take a computer applications class, yet are expected to “just know” how to properly format a Word document, or put together an effective PowerPoint presentation, and even present their data in Excel using charts.
On the professional side, I’ve talked to business people who felt limited in their knowledge of Word. Business letters that “did the job” but lacked the polish were the norm. Where a formatted table would have grabbed the reader’s attention, the extra time required to learn tables meant that plain text data separated by tabs had to be used.
When my daughter started college last August, she didn’t want her papers to be judged by a poorly formatted bibliography or headers that weren’t properly aligned. But she also didn’t have time to wade through a thick book about Microsoft Word on top of her other class work. She needed a concise reference for quickly achieving the results she wanted.
You get the picture. All the influences around me screamed for Word resources that provided answers NOW, QUICK and TO THE POINT.
You want to create a table, insert a graphic, put that formula in a document? Don’t muddle through a 350-page book when the answers are in 90. Cut the fluff, and get to the stuff!
It gets even better with the Kindle Interactive Edition of Microsoft Word 2016 In 90 Pages. The eBook edition is formatted to have exactly the same page layout as the print edition with the added bonus of video plugins. For example, you can read the steps for creating a table and click the video icon to see how to create a table.
Do you have specific challenges when using Word 2016? I’d like to know. Please comment or email. My goal is to create the resources you want.
Belleyre Books 
Reblogged this on Karl Dickey's Blog.