Working Through the Shelly Cashman Series for Office 2007
The Shelly Cashman Series textbooks for Microsoft Office 2007 are hands-on workbooks that walk students through core tasks in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook. They are not reference manuals. You open a chapter, follow a set of numbered steps, and complete exercises that build on each other. That structure is why they remain popular in college courses even though the software they teach is over a decade old. I ran into a specific issue while grading student projects based on the Excel 2007 lab manual. The textbook shows students using absolute cell references like $B$4 for tax rate lookups, but several students kept getting #REF! errors when they copied their formulas across columns. The problem was that some of the exercise files had merged cells in the lookup tables, and Excel 2007 handles merging and formula copying in ways that older Windows versions do not. The fix was straightforward: unmerge those cells, convert the lookup area to a proper table or at least ensure contiguous cells, and rebuild the INDEX-MATCH formulas instead of relying on the textbook's VLOOKUP approach. VLOOKUP breaks faster when column order shifts during a merge operation.
Why the Microsoft Office 2007 Shelly Cashman Series Still Comes Up
Office 2007 introduced the ribbon interface, which replaced the traditional menu bar. The Shelly Cashman Series adapted to this change by restructuring every chapter around ribbon tabs instead of menus. If you are taking a course that uses one of these books, the organization will follow the ribbon layout: Home tab first, then Insert, Page Layout, and so on. Knowing this helps because the textbook labels and screenshots match that flow exactly. Deviating from it means you will find yourself looking for file options that the book says are under File but you cannot locate if you skip ahead. One thing beginners consistently miss is that the exercises assume you are working with the default template files included in the companion disk or download. These files have preformatted styles, named ranges, and sometimes hidden helper columns. When students start from a blank document instead, the step-by-step instructions fall apart quickly. I have seen this happen in at least half of my introductory classes. The workaround is to always verify the filename given in the exercise header and load that exact file before beginning.
What the Series Actually Covers
Each book in the series is divided into chapters that map directly to major functional areas. The Word volume covers document creation, mail merge,, and document review tools. The Excel volume goes from basic data entry through pivot tables, charts, and macro recording. PowerPoint covers slide masters, transitions, and animation timing. Access walks through table relationships, query builders, and form design. Outlook focuses on email management, calendar scheduling, and contact organization. The exercises are graded by complexity. Early chapters ask you to type plain text and apply basic formatting. Later chapters introduce nested functions in Excel, SQL-like queries in Access, and VBA macros. The difficulty curve is intentional and mostly works, though I have found that the intermediate Excel chapters can jump too fast from basic SUM formulas to financial functions like PMT and NPV without enough practice time between them. Students who skip ahead tend to get stuck around chapter 6 or 7.
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A Practical Note on Using the Companion Files
The companion files are the biggest time saver and also the biggest source of confusion. Each chapter comes with starter files, solution files, and sometimes data files that are required for subsequent exercises. The textbook rarely states this explicitly, but later exercises depend on the output of earlier ones. If you skip an exercise and do not save the file correctly, the next chapter may reference a cell or sheet name that no longer exists. I learned this the hard way when a student spent three hours debugging a PivotTable that failed because she had renamed a worksheet in chapter 3 without updating the reference in chapter 5. The safe approach is to keep a separate folder for each chapter and never overwrite previous exercise files unless the instructions tell you to. Use the naming convention from the textbook exactly as written.
Where the Series Falls Short
Office 2007 is unsupported by Microsoft as of October 2020. Security patches stopped coming out years ago, and some third-party tools and add-ins no longer work with it. The Shelly Cashman Series books for 2007 reflect the software as it existed at that time, which means they do not cover features added in Office 2010 and later. This includes things like the Flash Fill tool in Excel, improved Power Query, and the newer chart types in PowerPoint. If your goal is simply to pass a course that mandates one of these textbooks, the series does the job adequately. If your goal is to learn Office skills that are directly applicable to modern workplaces, you will hit limitations quickly. The ribbon concepts transfer, but many of the specific tools taught in the 2007 editions have been replaced or reorganized. A student who learns Advanced Filter in Excel 2007 will find that it still exists but is rarely used in practice anymore because Power Query has taken its place for most data transformation tasks. The Access portion is especially dated. The series teaches .mdb database format conventions and legacy query design, while most real-world Access use has moved toward .accdb, SharePoint integration, and Power Apps connections. The book does not address this at all.
How to Get the Most Out of It
Read the objective section at the start of each chapter before touching the exercises. The objectives list exactly what skills you should have after completion, and they are usually accurate. Follow the steps in order. Do not try to skip ahead or jump between chapters randomly, because the exercises are sequential by design. When a step says click a button on the ribbon, actually look for it rather than guessing. The 2007 ribbon can feel cluttered at first, but the button locations are consistent within each tab. Take a screenshot of any dialog box that confuses you and compare it side by side with the textbook illustration. The images in the series are generally accurate, though occasionally an arrow or label is off by a millimeter, which can throw people who are already unsure. For Excel specifically, practice building formulas manually before copying them. The textbook shows the result of each formula, but understanding how the formula was constructed takes longer than the book suggests. A good rule of thumb is to spend at least twice as long writing the formula as the book spends explaining it. This slows you down initially but prevents you from having to redo three pages of work when a grade breaks later in the same spreadsheet.
If you are working through the series independently and do not have access to an instructor, the solution files at the end of each chapter are useful but should be used sparingly. Check your answer only after you have completed the exercise fully. Using the solution file as a crutch during the process defeats the purpose of the hands-on learning model the series is built around.
Downloading and Sourcing the Materials
The textbooks are available through Cengage's website and major retailers. The companion files are typically accessed via a code printed inside the front cover of a new edition. If you have a used copy, the code may already be redeemed, which means you will need to request a new one from Cengage support or obtain the files from your institution's course materials page. Some colleges also host the companion files on their learning management system, which is usually the fastest route. There are multiple editions covering different Office applications. The full series includes separate volumes for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook, as well as combined volumes for courses that span multiple applications. Make sure you are using the correct volume for your needs. The ISBNs vary by edition, so checking the course syllabus or instructor's required materials list before purchasing is the most reliable method. The books themselves are dense with screen captures and step-by-step instructions. They are not designed for casual browsing. Work through them methodically, save your files properly, and keep the companion materials organized. The series rewards careful, sequential effort and punishes shortcuts.
