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Section 1: About This Guide
| ID: | Type: -- | Roles: All | Revised: 07/26/04 |
| How To Use This Guide | |||
The purpose of this guide is to provide a comprehensive on-line resource for understanding, using, and trouble-shooting the xlWorkbench system. For those new to xlWorkbench, this guide provides step-by-step instructions for getting up and running with the software. For those already using xlWorkbench, this guide serves as a reference to all the options and settings within the system and offers techniques and suggestions for using the software effectively.
This guide is divided into four sections:
Each section contains a collection of articles. You're in the first article of About This Guide. Using xlWorkbench is the heart of this guide and where you'll spend most of your time. Microsoft Excel Topics and Microsoft Windows Topics contain articles related to Excel and Windows issues, respectively. Because xlWorkbench runs within Microsoft Excel, which, in turn, runs within Microsoft Windows, topics involving Excel and Windows arise naturally in any discussion of the xlWorkbench system. While these topics are important to running xlWorkbench effectively, they are not, strictly-speaking, xlWorkbench topics. I link to these topics as needed from the articles in Using xlWorkbench.
If you're new to xlWorkbench, you can start with this article and proceed sequentially through the rest of the articles in this guide to get comprehensive coverage of what the xlWorkbench system is, how it works, and what you can do with it. The header and footer of each article contain Previous and Next links to enable this style of navigation. Alternatively, if have some familiarity with xlWorkbench, or just want to browse, you can pick articles of interest directly from the contents page. Each article presents a reasonably complete discussion of a single topic, while giving links to related articles.
In addition to sequential navigation links, the header of each article page also contains links to elements of this guide that you may wish to "pop-up" in a new browser window for quick reference or action:
The FAQ is a list of frequently asked questions with corresponding answers. The Glossary defines terms used within this guide. What's New offers a list of links to the pages that have been updated recently. The Contact page is a "smart" page that allows you to send email to me while remembering your email address so that you have to enter it only once. The Contact link utilizes JavaScript and opens a new browser window automatically. For any other link in this guide, you can control whether the linked page is opened in the current window or a newly created one. See Browsing Tips to learn how to open a page in a new browser window.
Articles come in three types:
Concepts articles focus on explaining how something works within the xlWorkbench system, usually without going into the details. How-To articles discuss in detail how to perform specific tasks within the xlWorkbench system. Reference articles cover all the menu items, buttons, and option settings in the xlWorkbench system, coupling screen shots with explanations. If you want to know what a specific button or option setting you come across in xlWorkbench does, look for the reference article that covers it. Two examples of reference articles are the User Interface Reference and the System Options Reference.
Each article also has Roles associated with it. Roles indicate the article's target audience. There are two roles in the xlWorkbench system: the Designer Role and the User Role. You can learn more about these roles here, but for now, the distinction between the roles is that the Designer wants to create new workbooks within xlWorkbench and use the system to its fullest extent, while the User simply wants to take advantage of the workbooks the Designer has already created.
Designers and Users have different goals, and accordingly, Users have less to learn about the xlWorkbench system than Designers, while Designers need to know everything Users know and more. Once you determine which role suits you, you can check an article's Roles indicator to see if it applies to you. Users can skip articles marked for Designers, while both Users and Designers will be interested in articles marked All.
If you're new to xlWorkbench, it is not important for you to know if you're a Designer or a User at this point. Roles simply recognize that people bring different goals to using any piece of software and help reduce the information that people with more narrow goals must wade through to become productive. Just continue browsing this guide and learning more about the xlWorkbench system. The role that makes sense for you will become apparent.
Copyright © 2004 Robert S. Buckles. All rights reserved.