Google Apps: The Missing Manual

by Nancy Conner

This comprehensive and easy-to-follow new book teaches you how to use the new web-based applications from Google that are providing a viable alternative to Microsoft Office for many businesses. While Google's office suite shows a lot of promise, navigating what you can and can't do and -- more importantly -- understanding how to do it isn't always easy. With this book, you can get the most out of Google's web-based business suite.

Genres: Nonfiction

1174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Nancy Conner has been fascinated by coastal California horticulture since she arrived here in the early 1960s. A graduate of Wellesley College and Stanford University, she was a docent at Strybing Arboretum in the late 1970s. She cofounded the San Francisco Landscape Garden Show and was instrumental in its organization for the twelve years it was managed by Friends of Recreation and Parks in San Francisco. She has long been active in the cause for parks, serving on the boards of both the San Francisco Parks Alliance and the Presidio Trust. Her pet park projects include restoring the Conservatory of Flowers and building the underground garage in Golden Gate Park. She gardens in Inverness.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

For work...

Edited 7/24/11: At the end, everyone dies. I was really surprised. A great book about Google Apps for enterprise as long as you don't get too emotionally involved with the protagonists.

Seriously: I thought there was going to be more about Google Apps admin console, but when is that information ever in paper format?

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Google Office: The Missing Manual has the goal of documenting every feature available in the Google apps suite. It achieves that goal, as far as I can tell, and does so in a readable way. If clarity and completeness were the only criteria I would give this book 5 stars.

But I question the usefulness of a full-blown, menu-by-menu, option-by-option reference manual for Google apps. Most features in the Google apps suites are easy to use and easy to find. Most, but not all. I would have much preferred to see a book that was task-oriented - maybe a recipe / cookbook format. And above all, a book that is much smaller. This book is too large to lay flat, so it can't really be used as a reference manual - a failing of most computer-related books in this age of 1000 page monstrosities vying for space on the shelves at B&N.

I also read Google Apps for Dummies, a much smaller book with less comprehensive coverage, and found it to be more useful. It gives greater emphasis to some of the more difficult tasks and completely skips over obvious menu-driven tasks that you would easily figure out on your own. The very comprehensivenes of The Missing Manual prevents it from glossing over anything, so the most trivial operations are given nearly equal space with the most complex.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough look at Google Apps that is still relative in 2011. I did learn some things about how it works that I had not figured out on my own. Does anyone really use Google Talk?

[Wenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Resource