Using your Mac is easy to do. Here are some shortcuts. How many are you already using? Which ones will you try later today?
To write anything: click to open Pages. Up comes a blank document, ready for your report, a birthday blessing for one of your 45 closest relatives, an anniversary poem to send to some family member, or the first chapter of your fiction piece that’s been brewing in your head.
Jot down some key ideas. Do Command + S to save it, giving it a short title.
Off the page where you’re writing do a click with the right side of the mouse which brings up a short list. Choose New Folder and drag this latest writing into it. Type a name for the folder.
When you’re ready to add to that first version of the new writing do Command + D to duplicate what you have and add to it. Keep Version 1 as is; work on Version 2. As you think of other bright ideas during the day you make a new version and keep it in the same folder.
Your busy brain has thought of some important details to add, or some colorful adjectives, or . . . . That first idea may present possibilities. A “I remember when…” piece may have poetic notions. Now you’ve got a document of prose and a document of delightful rhyme. Keep these in the same folder.
As the deadline approaches you put the finishing touches on the one that fills the bill. Name the final version “June handout BEST.” Those other ideas may lend themselves to some other use, so hold on to them for now.
With cursor in the background screen do Command + I to bring up Get Info on the left hand side, a nifty box for you to add info. Keywords you put in can help you find this new writing later.
Command + R when looking at a list from the Inspector you view a tiny picture of the various files. Put your cursor on the one you want to find. Command + R then brings it up in the files so you can see where it’s located. (When you see the one you want in Inspector you can just click on the title you want and it will open, but you won’t know what folder it’s in.)
To cut, highlight what you want to remove and do Command + X. Paste what you’ve then highlighted with Command + V. To copy, highlight what you want and do Command + C.
Find it on your desktop or a file list: On the Menu at top of page that lists Finder first, go to File > Label and choose a color. Your folder will show up in a list with that color bar around the title.
Want to enlarge the type under the folders on the desktop? On the main menu bar on the top go to View > Show View Options. Experiment with enlarging icon size, spacing, text.
On the Internet, Command + D at the URL line of the website lets you add that site to a folder in Bookmarks. Scroll through the little box to find the suitable home for that URL.
Command + Shift + 4 brings up the screen shot that you stretch around the picture or text that you want to copy and saves the screen shot as a file on desktop.
Command + B makes what you’ve highlighted turn into a bold font. Do it again over the bold and it toggles to go back to not-bold.
Command and + on a highlighted word lets you enlarge it by repeatedly tapping the +. The opposite, Command and the - will shrink the highlighted word.
On Mountain Lion you can do some of this an easier way. Highlight the word or paragraphs, etc. Then right click with your mouse on that document. It lists choices, such as spelling, speech, etc. Look under Writing Tools and it brings up look up in dictionary, thesaurus, search in Spotlight, Google, Wikipedia, and show statistics.
If you’ve set Pages to show word count at the bottom of the page: click on Words and it gives the total number of pages, lines, paragraphs, characters and characters not counting spaces.
If you accidentally delete something -- and before you type in something else -- go to Edit on the menu across the top of Pages and click to Undo Typing. It will replace what you took out.
Here’s 8 pages of shortcuts if you’re REALLY into shortcut info for every possible idea: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 Keyboard by category
Let’s Take a Look at Mail: When you’ve clicked to open a New Message and have written a first draft, then you can click on the last tiny icon on the top right. Your Mac gives you choices of how to make your email more attention-getting with choices of colorful templates such as Birthday, Announcements, Photos, Stationery, and Sentiments. You can drag in some photo to make this email personalized.
Shop on Amazon: Go to amazon.com and click on Sign in to set up Your Account. Must allow cookies! Command + , (the comma) then choose Privacy > Block cookies from 3rd parties. Go to Your account to see history, using gift cards, settings, etc. Your balance never expires. (I go back afterwards and change Cookies setting to Never.)
Start your own FREE blog: https://accounts.google.com/ Must allow cookies first. Then sign in with email address and a password. Set up your account. Go to view Dashboard where you have choices to make about web albums, YouTube profile, etc. Go to www.blogger.com to look at available templates. Here’s links to info: https://support.google.com/blogger/
Keep up to date: If you subscribe to NetNewsWire you can be notified when there’s a new entry to the PMUG newsblog http://pmugnews.blogspot.com and also to the PMUG website: http://pmug.us/ Take a look here http://netnewswireapp.com/mac
(That’s all for now!) This is the PMUG meeting handout for June 15, 2013
from Elaine Hardt