Mac makes it easy for you to find what you’ve written and saved. Of course, it does take a little effort on your part. So you wrote about your dog, but you gave the piece a cute little title. Now, where is it? You could try Command + the space bar which opens the Spotlight at the upper right side of the menu bar. With a few key words typed in you might get some clues as where to look. You can click on an entry there and it will open, or hold the cursor there and it will identify where it is filed.
Better yet. Give yourself an assignment. Go to that list of stories or articles or poems you’ve written. Click to open one of them and see what key words would help you find it next time. Then close the piece, click on just the title in the list of documents. Do Command + i and it opens the Spotlight Comments box with the info of Kind, Size, Where, Created, Modified, Open with, Preview and Sharing & Permissions. Put in some key words in that Comments box. Close and smile; you’ve just made your life easier with Mac. Next time one of those key words might help Spotlight find your document.
You already know you can find things by date when you click View to make it sort by date. If you just wrote this piece last week or last month perhaps you can find it by date. When you have Finder open on the screen you can do Search For and choose Today, Yesterday, Past Week.
Something sent to me for posting on the newsblog had some commas misplaced outside, instead of inside the quotation mark. I needed to check the whole document while it was still on my mind.
In Pages, the writing program I use, I opened the document and did Command + F for Find. I put a comma in the blank by the word Find. One by one, as I went Next each comma in the writing came up highlighted. I could see the ones which were properly placed, and several that needed fixing. How easy is that! Find not only finds words that you want to locate, but can help you use your punctuation correctly. Sometimes in a font the exclamation mark looks too close, so I find each of them, highlight one of them at a time and change it to italic!
Need some help with punctuation or grammar? Here are several websites, quick and easy to read. Info from Purdue University, examples, etc. Examples from Stage Door, short and to the point. Lots of links, samples, specific info from the University of Northern Iowa.
What a relief. We no longer have to correctly type in http:// and the correct and complete URL of some site. Key words can help Google or Yahoo, whoever, come up quickly with a list of suggested sites. One of them on the first page is probably the one you want!
Yes, the search engines know where to find you. Take a look. I’ve used Google as the example, but try also other search engines listed & described here.
Where do you live? Google Maps can show you. Enter your address. Click on the Yellow Man and drag towards the marker Google has placed. Neighborhood streets that have been filmed by the Google camera vehicle are shown now in blue. Up comes street view. Don’t like what they show? You can contact them about your concerns. What does your old house in Phoenix look like now? Are they keeping the yard looking nice?
If you enter your name in the Google search box and place quotation marks around it you can find websites that mention you by name, or other people with YOUR name. Interesting to see how many of “you” there are in the US.
You can also put your name down under Google Images and see what comes up! In my example, up came book covers and people’s photos from websites that have quoted a poem or writing of mine.
Been mentioned on the Daily Courier lately? Look under Find It for classifications such as Archive, Photo Gallery, Sports, etc. If you want to submit a great photo this is where to go.
Keep up with the latest on Discussions and Widgets. Anyone download the “Boredom Button”? The Apple Store has items and prices, but also links to education, business, international stores, government and military, special deals, and click to talk to an Apple Specialist.