the mac tips site

Tables in Numbers

rodlawton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:53:19 +0000

• You could be making life hard for yourself if you use your old Excel habits in Numbers. Instead of using one huge table to organise your data (it’s all you can do in Excel), split it up into individual tables. It makes it much easier to distinguish your Receipts from your Payments, for example, before creating a third, Profit/Loss table. Remember, tables can be moved around, reformatted and restyled independently, and the cell references between tables remain intact.

Batch changes in iPhoto

rodlawton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:46:56 +0000

• Descriptions are a great way to add information to pictures in iPhoto because there’s only space for so many keywords before they run out of control. But isn’t it a bit of a nuisance to have to type a description over and over again for each photo? Then don’t do it! Select all the photos which can share a common description and use the Photos > Batch Change command, or the shift-command-B shortcut. Now you can type in a description to replace what’s already there or click the box to ‘Append’ it. Don’t forget that Descriptions can be used in searches and Smart Albums, so they’re just as effective as keywords.

Smart Mailboxes

rodlawton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:40:41 +0000

• They are quite new, and you’ve probably figured out a workable mail filing system already, so maybe you just haven’t round to it yet. But do try them out, because it only takes a moment. Think of them as a kind of automatic mail filter or, if that doesn’t work, as a kind of permanent search result. So what would you use them for? How about this: we get lots of mail which we normally file in mailboxes according to the job or project they apply to. This means mail from particular individuals gets spread across many folders. But we can set up a smart mailbox straight from the message window via a drop-down, and from now on, all the messages from that individual will be displayed collectively in the smart mailbox, even the ones we’ve already received. Things don’t have to be rocket science to be clever.

Saving email attachments

rodlawton — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:38:15 +0000

• When someone sends you an attachment and you click the Save button, the attachment’s stored in your Downloads folder, and you then have to find that so that you can move it to where you want it. True, most folk will have a Downloads icon on their dock, but it’s still a bit of a drag (sorry). Instead, open a Finder window, navigate to the folder where you want to put the attachment(s), expand the attachments section in the message window and just drag the icon(s) from the message window to the Finder window. Easy.