Office 2010 Inside Out is available

Both the print and e-book editions of Office 2010 Inside Out are finally available. The 960-page volume, written by Carl Siechert and me, covers the four core programs that are available in all editions of Office 2010—Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint—as well as Outlook, which is available in all editions except Office 2010 Home and Student.

I’m especially pleased that Microsoft Press, through its distribution agreement with O’Reilly, has made this title available in five DRM-free e-book formats. That means you can buy the e-book once and read it on any compatible device or a reader program on your PC. It’s available in the native Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Sony Reader formats, as well as PDF. All formats are unprotected, so you can search, copy, paste, and print as needed. (For the full scoop on how these DRM-free ebook formats, work, see this detailed page.) One cool fact about the electronic editions: screenshots are available in color (for devices like the iPad that support color), even though the print edition is black and white only.

HOW TO BUY

Print edition

Currently, Amazon.com has the best price on the print edition. In the U.S., that’s $34.64, with free shipping. Order here.

Office 2010 Inside Out does not include a companion CD. In the back of the print edition, you’ll find a voucher that gives you free access to the full book online via Safari Books Online (no subscription fee is required if you use the voucher code).

Electronic edition

The simplest way to purchase the e-book is to go to oreilly.com, where you can pay the full retail price of $43.99 for the Ebook edition alone or $60.49 for a Print+Ebook bundle. (The order link is here, but keep reading for advice on how to spend a lot less money.)

Personally, I think that price is too high, so I’ve found a couple of options that will save you a significant amount of money:

• If you own any previous edition in the Office Inside Out series, sign up for a free user account at oreilly.com and register your title. They’ll send you a coupon that entitles you to a 40% discount on the print edition or a 50% discount on the e-book. That cuts the price of the e-book to a very reasonable $21.99. Order here.
• If you have already purchased the print edition of Office 2010 Inside Out, you can register the title at oreilly.com and purchase an e-book upgrade for $4.99. Order here.
• If you don’t own a previous edition and you want both the print and e-book editions, your best bet is to buy the print edition from Amazon (or another reseller) and then purchase the $4.99 e-book upgrade from O’Reilly. At a total price of $39.63, that do-it-yourself bundle saves you more than $20 compared to the full retail price at oreilly.com.

I mentioned that the e-books are DRM-free, but one other benefit is worth noting as well: when you purchase an e-book, you buy lifetime access. That means if you lose or damage your electronic copy, you can go to your O’Reilly account and download the book again. In addition, you can download and use any or all of the e-book formats as part of a single purchase. So you can get the PDF version and the Kindle version and the iPad version for one price.

If you’ve got the book, Carl and I welcome your feedback and questions, either in the comments section here or via e-mail, using this site’s contact form.

To see the Table of Contents and an excerpt from Chapter 1, go here.

For another excerpt (Chapter 15, Inside OneNote 2010), go here.