Office 2008 for Mac All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter I.7. Getting Help!

In This Chapter

• Getting familiar with the new Help interface

• Looking into newsgroups and community resources

• Checking for updates

• Finding helpful Office Web sites

• Getting some MVP assistance

• Joining the club

• Helping legal and medical professionals

Help has changed! Really. In the past when you searched Microsoft Office Help, you'd enter some keywords and get results from a database on your hard drive. Today, searching for help happens online unless you don't have an Internet connection.

Now everyone has Web 2.0, which allows the entire world to communicate interactively with everyone else. Office 2008 is the first version of Office for Mac to take advantage of interactive Web technologies. Interactive Web technologies are often called Web 2.0 technologies. Office 2008 Help allows you to interact with the people who provide Help at Microsoft as well as to interact with other users who have the same products that you do. Suddenly, a community can help you, and you may not be aware but you're already connected to it. Just open the door!

Helping You with New Help

People at Microsoft have been listening to Office customers for more than 25 years. In that long time, they've heard their fair share of complaints and praise for their help and product support. The people of the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) at Microsoft in particular have gone out of their way to find, listen to, and change the way they provide help. As a result, the Help feature in Office 2008 has been ...