Sue Mosher
List Price: $19.99
By: Sams
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Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> General AAS
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Microsoft -> Applications -> Office 2000
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Microsoft -> Applications -> Outlook
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Disorganized and light on details 2 out of 5 stars.
14 of 17 people found this review helpful.
When I purchased this book, I was expecting to really learn how to program Outlook. What I got was a choppy book that doesn't cover the subject in much depth whatsoever.This book suffers on a number of fronts. I think much of the blame lies on the publisher with only some of it on the author. The fact is, Sams has created a whole "Teach yourself X in 24 hours" series. Each book in the series uses 24 small chapters that you can read very quickly. This format is a downfall because it artificially forces an author into a fixed format. You must have 24 chapters, one per "hour." Each chapter must be very short to avoid exceeding an hour's reading time. Many of the chapters in this book were less than 20 pages each. With tables and screen shots, that doesn't leave much room for prose. Indeed, with these restrictions, an author cannot spend a lot of time on complex subjects or create chapters at appropriate locations dictated by the material.
As a result of the format, Mosher has produced a book that only introduces the subject of Outlook forms, Outlook VBScript programming, and Outlook VBA programming without much depth. Many of the chapters are simply a rehash of VBScript and VBA reference material without much expository description. While this material is appropriate for inclusion, it burns about seven chapters out of 24. As a result, there isn't much room left over for other things.
Another problem is that the book is choppy. It jumps back and forth between VBScript and VBA almost at random within chapters making it very difficult to read. If you are only interested in Outlook forms, for instance, you have to wade through a large amount of VBA material searching for the VBScript material. You can't just skip a few VBA-only chapters.
While descriptions of both VBScript and VBA are appropriate for the book, the constant context switches also make it very difficult to use the book in any reference manner. After looking up something in the book, one can't determine whether the material applies to VBScript or VBA without rereading whole sections of the chapter to pick up the context.
Finally, the largest fault that I see with this book is a lack of deep examples. Most of the examples are very, very small and disconnected from each other. I would have liked to see more material on VBScript and forms since that is the easiest way to create applications within Outlook itself.
In the end, I get the feeling that Mosher understands the material but didn't have enough paper to say anything useful. Forced with a difficult choice of burning pages on VBScript and VBA tutorials or producing in-depth examples, she chose the tutorial material and produced an acceptable introductory book that leaves that vetran programmer wanting more.
Editorial Review:
Sams Teach Yourself Outlook 2000 Programming in 24 Hours shows you how to build forms in both the Outlook forms designer and VBA. This book also shows you how to write programming code both behind those forms and at the application level to accomplish tasks expected of a personal information manager like Outlook. The examples emphasize PIM activities such as creating a follow-up call for a contact, managing standard replies and deploying Outlook forms and applications. The author describes good programming practices including naming conventions, debugging and commenting. By the end of the book, you'll be able to confidently handle Outlook objects and know how to explore the application's programming capabilities to extend it further.
