In the new version of iWork ’08, Numbers was included along with the traditional Pages and Keynote applications. Numbers is basically Apple’s version of Microsoft Office Excel. In this article, I am just going cover to basics you need to give you a general idea of how much Numbers is capable of. To experience more of Numbers functionality, I highly recommend you use the Inspector panel (hold down the Option, ⌘ (Command), and “I” keys to activate it) along with the built-in Templates to truly take advantage of making graphs.
Calculating Graph Data
When there is a graph with data filled in it, you can easily find out everything about the graph such as sums, averages, minimums, and maximums within a few clicks.
To start, select the first item in the graph and hold down the Shift key.
Then click anywhere else to finish making your selection.
Instantaneously, you’ll notice results appear in the bottom left sidebar in Numbers.
As I mentioned previously, to select a specific range on a graph clicking once and hold the the Shift key, then click one more time to finalize your selection.
Hover your mouse pointer over a graph until the column headers (“A”, “B”, “C”) appear.
When you put hover your mouse pointer over one of the columns, you should see a small arrow appear.
Click on the arrow, and choose “Sort Ascending” or “Sort Descending” to change the order of the data.
The longer you use your Mac, the better you will get at it. In Mac OS X, there are an insane amount of keyboard shortcuts to the point where you can even remember them all. I’m just going to mention common ones that will help you use your keyboard more than your mouse.
Logging Out
If you want to log-out without having that window appear asking if you are sure, just hold down the Shift, ⌘ (Command), Option, and “Q” keys.
Applications
If you want to quit an application hold down the ⌘ (Command) and “Q” keys.
If you’re using multiple windows in an application (for ex. multiple Safari windows), use the ⌘ (Command) and “`” keys to switch between the windows.
When you’re using your Mac and you’ve got several applications open, instead of going to the app with your mouse, use the
⌘ (Command) and the Tab keys.
Whenever you have quit an application, you sometimes get a “Don’t Save, Cancel, or Save…” drop-down menu. Most of the time you can use the ⌘ (Command) and “D” keys to select “Don’t Save” or hit the Return key to select “Save”.
If you want to close a window in an application, simply use ⌘ (Command) and “W” to close that window.
To undo something, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “Z”.
To hide an application, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “H”.
To save a document, just hold down ⌘ (Command) and “S”.
Trash Can
If your trash-can is full and you’d like to empty it, use the
⌘ (Command) and Tab keys until you get to Finder, and hold down the Shift, ⌘ (Command), Option, and Delete keys to empty the trash without the “are you sure” window appearing.
Shut Down, Restart, Sleep
When you’re ready to shut down, restart, or put your computer to sleep use the following keyboard keys.
To Shut Down, use the ⌘ (Command), Option, Control, and ⏏ (Eject) keys.
To Restart, use the ⌘ (Command), Control, and the ⏏ (Eject) keys.
To Sleep, use the ⌘ (Command), Option, and ⏏ (Eject) keys.
iChat
If you have your iChat preferences setup so it doesn’t log you in once it opens, then use the ⌘ (Command) and “L” keys to sign on.
If your Buddy List doesn’t appear, hold down
the ⌘ (Command) and “1” keys.
Safari
When you’re in Safari, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “L” to go directly to the address bar.
Use ⌘ (Command), Option, and “F” to go to the Google Search bar.
If you need to search a website for something hold down ⌘ (Command) and “F” for a find menu.
If you want to switch between tabs, hold down Control and “Tab”.
When you want to bookmark a web page, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “D”.
If a website is stuck, hold down the ⌘ (Command) and “R” keys to refresh it.
To browse a website, hold down Option and the downward/upward arrow key (￬ ￪).
To make a new tab, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “T”.
Dashboard
To open up Dashboard, just hit the F12 key (you may need to use the Fn key for a laptop).
To view your widgets, hold down ⌘ (Command) and the “+” key. To browse through them, use ⌘ (Command) and the arrows keys (← →) .
Mail
To see if you got any new mail, hold down Shift, ⌘ (Command), and “N”.
If you want to see your Inbox, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “1”. For Sent mail, hold down ⌘ and “4”.
To reply to a message, first make sure the message is selected (use the Tab key until if it’s not selected); then hold down ⌘ (Command) and “R”.
To send a New Message, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “N”.
Finder
If you’re in Finder, hold down Shift, ⌘ (Command), and “N” to make a new folder.
Hold down ⌘ (Command) and “F” to use the Find search.
iTunes
To play or pause a song, hit the Spacebar.
To go to the next song, hold down ⌘ (Command) and the right arrow key (→).
If you accidentally close the iTunes window and your music is still playing, just hold down ⌘ (Command), Option, and “1” to show the iTunes window.
If an item is highlighted in the sidebar, you can type the letters of another sidebar item to go to it. For example, type “po” and the blue highlighted rectangle switches to Podcasts.
To fast-forward through a song, hold down ⌘ (Command), Option, and the right arrow key (→).
If you want to highlight what song is currently playing, hold down ⌘ (Command) and “L”.
Recently, I was making a video in iMovie with pictures and titles. I prefer iMovie instead of iDVD when I need to add titles and Ken Burns effects. The only problem that I was faced with was to make the iMovie project work on a DVD. There is no visible way to do this, but with a few work-arounds anything is possible. Here’s how:
With your project opened in iMovie, go to the Share menu and choose Media Browser.
In the window that appears, select “Large” so it will be displayed at its best quality.
When the movie has been uploaded to the Media Browser, open up iDVD.
In the pop-up window that appears, click on “Create a New Project”.
Enter a name and save the iDVD project to a location.
Once your in iDVD, click on the “Media” button in the bottom right corner of the window.
Click on the “Movies” tab at the top and select your movie project under the iMovie section.
When you’re sure that you have everything ready, insert a blank DVD-R disc and choose “Burn DVD” from the File menu.
I’m sure many users have noticed .Mac’s new web gallery feature. As neat as it looks, it’s quite easy to create your own custom galleries right within iPhoto. Here’s how:
Open up iPhoto from your dock or your Applications folder.
Select an album or several pictures for which you want to be in the gallery.
Go to the File menu and choose Export.
In the Export Photos window, go to the Web Page section.
Add a title and change the layout settings for the page(s).
When you’re all set, click on the “Export” button and choose a location to save the pictures to.
Then upload the “index.html” file, the “Images” folder, the “Resources” folder, the “Pages” folder, and the “Thumbnails” folder using an FTP program (Cyberduck).
To see an example of what the gallery looks like, click here for a screenshot.
Safari has always been able to read/open PDF documents quite fast using Preview. Some people choose to view PDF’s in Safari using Adobe Acrobat Reader because of the tools it has, but if you didn’t know this already—Preview can do just about all of what Acrobat can do (for viewing PDF’s in Safari). Here’s how:
Open a PDF in Safari.
Once it loads, right-click on the document.
A contextual menu should with many options: Back, Reload, Save Page As…, Print Page, Open with Preview, Automatically Resize, Actual Size, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Single Page, Single Page Continuous, Two Pages, Two Pages Continuous, Next Page, and Previous Page.
Most of those features I just listed are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll touch base on a few of the less-known ones.
Automatically Resize will expand the PDF size according to your browser.
Single Page Continuous is the default setting for viewing PDF’s—all the pages will appear, scroll down to view them.
Two Pages Continuous is similar to Single Page Continuous except there is one more page that will appear.
