Key for Switch to Apple - 04

SAVING, PRINTING, FINDING

Here are some more handy tips for getting around & using Mac OS X and the applications on it.

Uncover options. By default, the Print and Save dialogs for most applications are pretty sparse-looking. That's deceptive. See the downward-pointing triangle in the blue box? Click on it to display a lot of options that are otherwise hidden/

PDF it. While you're in the Print dialog, note the inconspicuous button marked PDF. Clicking on it will give you a drop-down menu that includes Save as PDF. What this means is that anything you can print, you can convert to a PDF instead of printing. No more printing and losing online receipts.

Search with Spotlight. This hard drive search tool needs an article all its own, so I won't try to do more than tell you what it is. Your Mac maintains a Spotlight index that includes not just filenames, but also every word within each file, and Spotlight will fetch results accordingly. Click on the magnifying glass in the top right-hand corner and enter a word to begin. Spotlight is also the engine that drives the little search bar you'll find at the top of any Finder window. When you perform a Spotlight search that way, your results will be displayed with the option of limiting them to the current folder, and with the option of searching file contents or only filenames. We'll go further into depth about Spotlight's capabilities in a future article.

If you're accustomed to using Google Desktop on a Windows PC, you know that it does something Spotlight can't: It displays your results with snippets of the surrounding text, just like a regular Google search does. You can download a Mac version of Google Desktop to gain this feature, but I've found that doing so slows things down a bit, perhaps because Spotlight and Google Desktop are both continuously indexing your files. A nice alternative is to download the freeware application SpotInside, which uses Spotlight's index but displays results in context with snippets of text, Google-style.

Manage windows with Exposé. Exposé is another feature that can save you a lot of time. One key will sweep aside all open windows to reveal your Desktop (until you press the key again); another key will push all your open windows out of each other's way so that you can choose among them by hovering the pointer over them; a third key will do the same, but only for windows in the front-most application. Which key does which function will depend on your Mac, and you can change it under Apple | System Preferences | Exposé and Spaces.

Change every shortcut. Well, that might be going a bit far. But you really can change and create all kinds of keyboard shortcuts. Under Apple | System Preferences | Keyboard, you can create a keyboard shortcut for any preexisting menu item. This can be done system-wide or for individual applications. Users of Microsoft Office for Mac should note that the Office apps have their own applets for accomplishing this. (story Link)