John Wiley & Sons has announced that they will be publishing a book on Lotus Symphony later this year:<blockquote>IBM Lotus Symphony For Dummies provides information users need to make the best use of the IBM Lotus Symphony suite. Included in the suite are productivity programs similar to those found in the popular Microsoft Office suite, including a word processor (Lotus Documents), a spreadsheet program (Lotus Spreadsheets), and a presentation program (Lotus Presentations). The book is organized around the three main software packages in the suite.
The book explains how to create a wide range of word processing documents, using Lotus Documents. Document-building tasks such as formatting, adding reference items and style building are covered. Readers find out how to create tables and Web pages, insert and work with graphics, add charts to documents, and include spreadsheet information in documents. Readers learn about the different file formats that Lotus Documents includes and how best to use these formats for distributing and sharing files with other users. Coverage of importing, viewing, and editing Microsoft Word documents is featured as well.
In Lotus Spreadsheets, readers learn how to create spreadsheets for calculating, analyzing, and managing key business and organizational data. The book discusses several different calculations in ways that help the reader get his or her job done. For example, what-if calculations are explained so readers know what kind of data to input into Lotus Spreadsheets, how to set up the what-if scenarios, and how to analyze the resulting data. Formulas and functions that users can use with Lotus Spreadsheets are described, including examples of real-world applications for them. The book also shows how to organize data in spreadsheets (such as hiding data), set up data ranges, calculate subtotals, and create charts. Readers learn how to import and modify Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheets.
For readers looking to use the Lotus Presentations to create and modify screen shows, this book will be one of the first on the market to show how. Included in the book are features such as the following:
- Using templates to create professional and attention-grabbing presentations
- Adding charts, drawing objects, text, multimedia and a variety of other items in presentation pages
- Importing and modifying Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations
- Spicing up presentations with animations, page transitions, multimedia objects, and effects
- Viewing thumbnail views of slide pages using the Page Sorter view
- Practicing presentations using the timing rehearsal feature
Scheduled for release on 20th August, and already listed on Amazon, this is just the kind of publication we’ve been after. Hopefully, many of the bricks and mortar book retailers will be stocking it alongside the hundreds of MS Office-related ones.  Oh, and blogger John Head will be the technical editor for the book – it promises to be a good one…
