This book isn't meant to be read from cover to cover like some Dan Brown page-turner. Rather, it's organized into tiny, no-sweat descriptions of how to do the things you need to do. If you're the sort of person who just doesn't feel right not reading a book from cover to cover, you can, of course, go ahead and read this thing from front to back.

I can recommend this approach, however, only for people who have already checked the TV listings. There may, after all, be a Dog the Bounty Hunter rerun on.

This comment dates me, but I'm not ashamed to say that I always enjoyed reading those encyclopedias my parents bought for my siblings and me. I could flip open, say, the E volume, look up elephants, and then learn just about everything I needed to know about elephants for a fifth-grade report: where elephants live, how much they weigh, and why they eat so much.

You won't read anything about elephants here, but you can use this book in the same way. If you want to learn about something, look through the Table of Contents or index and find the topic — printing checks, for example. Then flip to the correct chapter or page and read as much as you need or enjoy. No muss. No fuss.

If you want to find out about anything else, you can, of course, just repeat the process.

Sometimes I provide step-by-step descriptions of tasks. I feel very bad that I have to do this. So to make things easier for you, I highlight the tasks with bold text. That way, you'll know exactly what you're supposed to do. I also often provide a more detailed explanation in regular text. You can skip the regular text that accompanies the step-by-step descriptions if you already understand the process.

Here's an example that shows what I mean:

Okay, that's kind of an extreme example. I never go into that much detail. But you get the idea. If you know how to press Enter, you can just do that and not read further. If you need help — say, with the finger depression part or something — just read the nitty-gritty details.

Can you skip anything else? Let me see now.... You can skip the paragraphs with the Technical Stuff icons next to them. See the "Special Icons" section, later in this Introduction, for an example of the Technical Stuff icon. The information I stick in those paragraphs is really only for those of you who like that technical kind of stuff.

Don't skip the Warnings. They're the text flagged with the picture of the 19th century bomb. They describe some things you really shouldn't do.

Out of respect for you, I'm not going to put such stuff in these paragraphs as "Don't smoke." I figure that you're an adult. You can make your own lifestyle decisions.

So I'll reserve the Warnings for more urgent and immediate dangers — things akin to "Don't smoke while you're filling your car with gasoline."

I assume just three things:

Okay. I lied in the previous section. I'm going to assume one more thing: You own or somehow have access to a copy of Quicken.

You may be interested to know that Quicken comes in several versions. It doesn't really matter which one of the several versions you have. Each version works in basically the same way, and this book applies to them all. But because each version has a few unique features, you may find that your screen doesn't look exactly like the screens shown in this book. You may, for example, have a few buttons that you don't see in the figures I show you. Don't worry if this happens. It probably means that you're working with a different version than I am.

Just to let you know, I used the super-duper, includes-everything version to write this book. You can tell this because the menu bar, which appears in some of the figures, shows both a Rental Property menu and a Business menu. If you have a different version, your menu bar will not show these menus. Your title bar (if you compare) will also show a different name

The upshot here? Don't freak out if your version of Quicken 2010 looks a wee bit different from the figures shown in this book.

This book is organized into six mostly coherent parts.

To make the best use of your time and energy, you should know about the following conventions I use in this book.

When I want you to type something, such as Hydraulics screamed as the pilot lowered his landing gear, I put it in bold letters.

By the way, with Quicken, you don't have to worry about the case of the stuff you type (except for passwords, which are case sensitive). If I tell you to type Hillary, you can type HILLARY. Or you can follow e. e. cummings's lead and type hillary.

Whenever I describe a message or information that you see on the screen, I present it as follows:

Surprise! This is a message on-screen.

Like many computer books, this book uses icons, or little pictures, to flag things that don't quite fit into the flow of things. For Dummies books use a standard set of icons that flag little digressions, such as the following:

If you're just getting started, flip the page and start reading the first chapter.

If you have a special problem or question, use the Table of Contents or the index to find out where that topic is covered and then turn to that page.