Customer Reviews:
 Just what the title says. August 2, 2005
William L. Reeves (Tampa FL)
14 out of 17 found this review helpful
Well organized and easy to study. Suits multiple learning styles. The CD has some excellent additional information.
Step by Step: Microsoft Office Visio 2003 July 5, 2006
J. Gaston
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed going through this book. It is laid out well and has lessons you can do to help you learn.
 Good tutorial for non-database functionality February 1, 2005
Jake Burkey (Pullman, WA USA)
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
This is a well-written and easily understood intro to Visio, which does a good job of covering diagrams, flowcharts, Gantt charts, floorplans, and the like. But, it has absolutely no information on building database diagrams with Visio, for which I deducted a star.
 No Advanced-Usage Detail December 20, 2008
Tulsultant (Tulsa, OK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was satisfied with Vendor price and delivery, however, I was disappointed in the lack of detail for advanced-usage, e.g., tips & tricks, detailed "how-to's", etc. This book is OK for overall illustration of capabilities but lacks the detail that is equivalent to the inherent capabilities of Visio 2003. I've learned the hard way, by trial & error, that Visio 2003 can perform very complex visuals but it is painful to accomplish. I've found that a combination of this book and Visio F1 `Help Index' will get close to what I'm trying to figure out. In my case, I've been using the Visio 2003 Building Plan to replicate my entire home floor plan for remodeling. I've used Visio 2003 very effectively for this but, as I've said, it's been a painful learning process that the book, I'm afraid, helped only a little. For the price It's an OK general purpose reference.
 Yet another fairly useless manual December 11, 2007
Andy Glew (Hillsboro, OR, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book "Microsoft Office Visio Step by Step" is yet another example of an almost useless manual, that barely duplicates what is available in the online manual for Visio.
It basically consits of screen shots and procedures.
It doesn't sit back and say "well, what might a user want to do here? Oh, you want to create a circle with center and radius? Then look for such and such a shape in such and such a stencil." Etc.
Because it lacks this "meta-contemplation", this manual is only as good as the programmers - it is basically like talking to the programmers, in their mindset. (I'm a programmer: this is NOT good). If what you need to draw is exactly covered by Visio, this manual may help you. If what you need to draw is not exactly covered by one of Visio's pre-packaged setups, this manual is not much help.
I work in an intensely graphical field - VLSI design. But Visio has no pre-packaged setup for my area --- the "electrical engineering" and "digital design" stencils and templates are not very useful. (This opinion confirmed by surveying my fellow engineers at Intel and AMD - all of us want to use Visio, but all find Visio sorely lacking.)
This manual is utterly useless with respect to advanced Visio, e.g. using ShapeSheets to create "smart" shapes.
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Because I have mentioned my employers' names, past and present, I must add this disclaimer: this review is my own personal opinion, not the official position of Intel and AMD.
Although I daresay many engineers at Intel and AMD agree with these sentiments, it may be hard to put this on the record.
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