Rating: 
Summary: It's all there (almost) ... just a little hard to find
Review: Sue Mosher is a very readable writer and there's no doubt she knows her stuff inside and out. Most books in the Teach Yourself in 24 Hours series are beginner-intermediate introductions to the subject. That's true with Mosher's book - however, she manages to cover an impressive breadth of material in 24 small lessons.The problem is finding the material. This book could use a revamp in structure (I hope the publishers of the new 2002 edition are listening). There IS a good table of contents and a satisfactory index, but it's still devilishly hard to find stuff in this book, and to see how it fits together. The VBA/VBScript distinction is probably the biggest problem. The beginning Outlook programmer, even a programmer with experience in other languages, will not easily discern why Mosher talks about VBScript on one page and VBA on another. VBScript and VBA are distinct tools, with very different applications in Outlook programming. Mosher makes that point, but not clearly enough, and the struture of the book obscures the point. In the real world, "Outlook Form Design" could refer to VBScript or VBA programming. In Mosher's book, it refers only to the former - which is confusing and misleading. Instead of "Outlook Form Design", the first section should be titled "Customizing Default Outlook Forms with VBScript". The second section could be called "Designing New Outlook Forms with VBA" (although "Design with VBA", the current title, isn't bad). There are lots of practical examples in the book. As said above, the breadth of this book is amazing (even if depth suffers a little as a result), and there are pertinent examples for just about every topic covered. In order to facilitate a more unified structure, it might be helpful to give examples that are related to each other and form a single, functional "Outlook Application". That may help the reader understand how seemingly unrelated material fits together, and would certainly better point up the distinction between VBScript and VBA. This Teach Yourself Book (like others in the series) has a few typos - nothing too serious... Great book - just needs some reorganizing.
Rating: 
Summary: Useless if you're in a hurry
Review: This is definitely an excellent book allowing you to overview all powerful Outlook 2000 programming features. It is written in a clear and simple style, with plenty of valuable code examples to help you start writing useful application for your company organization. This book reflects Sue Mosher's eagerness for sharing her experiences, which we have already recognized in the Outlook programming news group. In short, this is a wonderful book which I would recommand to any one who would like to start programming with Outlook 2000.
Rating:
Summary: Disorganized and light on details
Review: When I purchased this book, I was expecting to really learn how to program Outlook. What I got was a choppy book that doesn't cover the subject in much depth whatsoever. This book suffers on a number of fronts. I think much of the blame lies on the publisher with only some of it on the author. The fact is, Sams has created a whole "Teach yourself X in 24 hours" series. Each book in the series uses 24 small chapters that you can read very quickly. This format is a downfall because it artificially forces an author into a fixed format. You must have 24 chapters, one per "hour." Each chapter must be very short to avoid exceeding an hour's reading time. Many of the chapters in this book were less than 20 pages each. With tables and screen shots, that doesn't leave much room for prose. Indeed, with these restrictions, an author cannot spend a lot of time on complex subjects or create chapters at appropriate locations dictated by the material. As a result of the format, Mosher has produced a book that only introduces the subject of Outlook forms, Outlook VBScript programming, and Outlook VBA programming without much depth. Many of the chapters are simply a rehash of VBScript and VBA reference material without much expository description. While this material is appropriate for inclusion, it burns about seven chapters out of 24. As a result, there isn't much room left over for other things. Another problem is that the book is choppy. It jumps back and forth between VBScript and VBA almost at random within chapters making it very difficult to read. If you are only interested in Outlook forms, for instance, you have to wade through a large amount of VBA material searching for the VBScript material. You can't just skip a few VBA-only chapters. While descriptions of both VBScript and VBA are appropriate for the book, the constant context switches also make it very difficult to use the book in any reference manner. After looking up something in the book, one can't determine whether the material applies to VBScript or VBA without rereading whole sections of the chapter to pick up the context. Finally, the largest fault that I see with this book is a lack of deep examples. Most of the examples are very, very small and disconnected from each other. I would have liked to see more material on VBScript and forms since that is the easiest way to create applications within Outlook itself. In the end, I get the feeling that Mosher understands the material but didn't have enough paper to say anything useful. Forced with a difficult choice of burning pages on VBScript and VBA tutorials or producing in-depth examples, she chose the tutorial material and produced an acceptable introductory book that leaves that vetran programmer wanting more.
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