Congratulations! Instead of blowing several hundred bucks on the biggest and most muscle-bound word processor, database program, spreadsheet program, graphics, and communications software you can find, you're using Microsoft Works 2000 – a program that can do probably everything you need for a lot less trouble and money.

Now it's time to stretch out your fingers and get ready to put this software to work. This step-by-step guide is for those people who

• Want to learn about their software without being bored silly
• Feel as though there should be a manual to explain the software manual
• Actually want to get some work done. Soon. Like today.
• Don't want to wade through a lot of technical gibberish/
• Don't think the way computer software engineers seem to think.

This book describes how to use all the programs of Microsoft Works 2000, separately and together, plus some introductory things on Windows, disks, and other basics. In this book, you'll explore the following topics and more:

• Window basics (opening, closing, and painting them shut)
• Word processing (like food processing, only messier)
• Spreadsheets (for soft, comfortable naps on your spreadbed)
• Databases (for storing all your baseless data)
• Graphics (for charting uncharted waters and general doodling)
• Calendarification, Calendarizing? (Using a calendar program)
• Web browsing (for schmoozing the Internet's World Wide Web)
• Newsgroups (for ranting about your pet peeves)
• E-mail (for sending and receiving messages and files)
• "Mail merge" of letters, envelopes, and labels (for doing your very own junk mail)

Unlike software manuals, this book doesn't have to deliver a positive message about the software, so it doesn't breathlessly try to show you everything you could possibly do. Nor does it describe, as a manual does, every button and command. Instead, it focuses on the everyday things you have to do, gives you some background, points you toward shortcuts, and steers you around some of the stuff you probably don't need.