How to find out where is your file or folder.

Command+Click on folder title

Command-click

Command and click the window title to reveal the folder or the file path, i.e. where the open folder or document is on the computer.

Remember that it works with both folders and files (documents.)

This trick is handy when you have a busy computer with lots of files and project folders.  It's best to organise your work as you go. Still, what if you have to find something you worked on last month, last year, or even a few years ago? 

Spotlight is brilliant in that it helps you find files by the keyword that you remember. When you hover the cursor over the name of the file in the Spotlight window it shows its path — where it is on the computer, folder after folder. But when you open the folder or the file you may not remember where it is on the machine. That's when checking the 'path' is helpful. It's like backtracking or zooming out — going from your current immediate location to a larger picture.

You can customise the toolbar of a folder window to have the path icon in it. In the Finder, click View > Customize toolbar and drag the Path icon to the toolbar. Click Done. When you click on the icon in an open folder, it shows the chain or path of all the folders where the one you're in at the moment is placed.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012), follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook and add me to your circles on Google+

Switching (cycling) through open apps in Mac OS.

To cycle (switch) through open programmes (applications) in Mac OS, press Command and hit the Tab key. 

You will see the large icons of all the open programmes in the middle of the screen. One hit on the Tab key will move you from the programme you are in to the one you’ve been using before that.

Continue pressing the Tab and you will ‘cycle’ through the programmes. Cycling goes to the right. 

But if the programme you want to switch to is on the left, press Command and Tab and hit the left arrow on the extended keyboard. If your keyboard doesn’t have arrows or if you simply don’t like arrows, Press Command and Shift and then hit Tab. Switching will go to the left.

Cult of Mac site suggests doing left-cycling by pressing Command and Tab and then typing tilde (~), which on some keyboard sits in the top row to the left of figure 1. I don’t have it on any of my keyboards, so cannot verify it. 

Declutter: Four Icons for the Same operation in Toolbar?

In an open iWork document, you may have these four icons in the Toolbar: insert a Text Box, insert a pre-designed shape from the Shapes drop-down menu, insert an object from the Objects drop-down menu, insert a Table, and insert a Chart.

This is all very well when you start using iWork, or use it for one particular purpose, e.g. for writing texts with an occasional image. 

When you progress to more sophisticated uses, with complex designs requiring multiple operations, such as moving objects, layering, masking, editing images, – you may want to add icons for these operations to the Toolbar. And it becomes cluttered. Some icons can even be pushed out of the view in the Toolbar. 

This is the point when you may want to consider removing Text Box, Shapes, Table and Charts icons from the Toolbar. To remove the icon, press Command and drag the icon off the Toolbar. It will disappear in a puff of animated smoke.

To insert a text box, a shape, a table, and a chart, you can now use the one remaining icon – Objects, with its drop-down menu. 

Click on Objects in the Toolbar, and you will see Text Box, Shapes with an additional menu, Table, and Charts, with an additional menu. Choose what you need to insert. 

To put the icons back into the Toolbar, go to the View menu and choose Customize Toolbar. Drag the required icons to the Toolbar strip at the bottom of the dialogue and click Done.

If, in your work, you have a few operations or tools that you use often, put them in the Toolbar for one-click activation. Use the same path: View > Customize Toolbar. Drag icons to the Toolbar strip.

How to add accents to letters without switching languages

Option key

How do you type café with the accent sign on top of the 'e'?

If you use several languages on your Mac you probably know that it is dead simple to switch between the languages (keyboard layouts): Control Command + Space for the two most recently used or Control ⌘+Option+Space to switch between more than two languages used. (You have to add language options in System Preferences.)
Important UPDATE: In current OS (July 2019, High Sierra), instead of Command key use Control+Space bar to swithc between the last two languages. To go through all the languages you use, add Option (alt) key to the combination. 

However, simply to add an accent (diacritical mark) to one or two letters in your text, you don't need to switch to French, Russian, Spanish or German.

Option key (the funny one between Control and Command) gives most commonly used diacritical signs: press Option and type 'e' to get acute accent, common in French and also used as a stress mark. The accent will appear highlighted in your document, then type 'e' or another letter that needs the accent - é, á, ó or í .

To see the available combinations open the Keyboard Viewer and press Option.

To add circumflex (Welsh tô bach – little roof) press Option and type 'i' to get the highlighted accent circumflex, then type the letter you need: ô, î, ê or â.

Tilde sign, common in Spanish, is with letter n – ñ.

Two dots (trema or umlaut) over some letters in Russian, German and other languages are with u – ü or ë.

Cedilla, the little tail attached in French to 'c' when it should be pronounced as 's', is, logically, with 'c' – press Option and type ç.

It's cleverly programmed – it won't let you put diacritics on letters with which they are not used.

Switching between language layouts can be an annoying distraction, so learning this little trick can help improve efficiency. It takes little time to memorise accent combinations and then you use them automatically, much like touch-typing.

There is an article on Wikipedia describing diacritical marks and accents, their names and uses.

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mac OSX Cookbook' (2012). Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages, like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook 

and add me to your circles on Google+

Editing Large Texts: the Uses of Command+F

Find command is indispensable when working on large chunks of text.

Press Command and type F to open the Find window. Then  type the word, or word combination, or part of a word in the window - and presto, you can scan a very large text in seconds to find what you are looking for. Here are a few tips I've noted to myself while copy-editing and reviewing a draft of a 340-page book.

Take for instance a situation when you notice that a woman character is described as having shiny auburn hair on page 187. You definitely remember that she was a red-head before. But on what page? Type 'read-head' and click on 'Previous' to find the passage to check. And there she is, a read-head on page 23. It's not just that people do change the colour of their hair, it's also that authors sometimes forget how they described their characters. It happens even to great writers, like Tolstoy. In War and Peace Prince Andrei has grey eyes in one part, blue eyes in another and wears a small icon of Mother of God in one passage, but St.Nicolas in another.

Click 'Next' to scan forward and see if the error appears further down the text.

Then, for example, you notice that a name or a particular word are spelled in different ways. Is it a mistake? Should it be corrected? Do you need a cross-reference?

Take 'kabuki'. Is it 'kabuki' or 'cabuki' or 'kobuki'? Check the word in the dictionary and then click on 'Find and Replace' to scan the text.

Take the name Krushev or Khrushev, the Soviet leader during the Cuban missile crisis. Which is it? There is also a Khrushchyov variant. Choose one spelling and stick to it for indexing and referencing purposes, if not for anything else.

Or the word 'czar' which seems to annoy the Tea Party movement in America so much. It can also be spelled, correctly, 'tzar' or 'tsar' reflecting the phonetics of the original Russian word, while 'czar' incorporates the Roman-Byzantine etymology (Ceasar). In this case just choose the most commonly used spelling and correct throughout, using 'Next' or 'Find and Replace'.

I posted recently on putting together a book in Pages where I recommended breaking big projects into manageable chunks. Here I'd add: with large bodies of text pre-edit them using the tips above BEFORE breaking the text into chunks (chapters, sections or pages). This will help to avoid errors and discrepancies. 

Command+F works in most internet browsers. Suppose you googled something and found a long article on the subject. To find the relevant passage in the article, type Command+F to open the search window (it's at the top in Safari and at the bottom in Firefox), then type what you are looking for.

Users of Apple Mac OS X have long appreciated the Spotlight search tool, which allows to search for files on your computer. It has its human limitations, though. What if you don't remember the name of the file? Or the same word appears in a multitude of files?

Here Command+F comes handy because you can open it in any folder or any window and start the search from where you are.

And of course these notes apply to most other word processing applications with search function.

Read my post on Teapots and the Tea Party movement and a Russian-style tea party. Photo: Apple blossom, ©A.Anichkin

And watch 'We don't need no stinkin CZARS' video about Teapotters fighting czarism (begins at 5:40 min into the clip). Video by New Left Media.

Keyboard shortcuts on this blog

Do many of us remember - or want to remember - the time before mouse? We used to do everything with just the keyboard, didn't we? There was an ad that had stuck in my memory from the seventies when the mouse first appeared: 'If you can point a finger, you can type'. Well, we've come the full round and re-learn the importance of keyboard.

Here is the list of my blogposts about various shortcuts I find particularly useful in Pages. A long list of shortcuts sits under Pages Help menu. And another comprehensive list of shortcuts is in System Preferences>International>Input Menu.



The usefulness of most shortcuts is self-evident, for example Command+S - Save. With many others it is not clear why you might need them and where they could be useful. That's why I scribbled notes about the ones I particularly liked while working in Pages.


Click on the label (tag) iWork Pages keyboard shortcuts or useful shortcuts to see all articles on this topic.

My top Pages shortcut: the undo
Health and Efficiency: three serious reasons to work with both hands
Look after your hands: useful shortcuts
Undo-Redo Shortcut: Zap To And Fro
How to design folders (about send backwards/bring forwards shortcuts)
Keyboard shortcuts: Hide and show invisibles and layout
Screenshots in Mac OS
What to do when picture wrapping pushes caption out of the text box - about Bring to Front shortcut
How to empty Trash (wastebasket) with locked files
Rose cover: simple tricks with photos
Mac-mouse equivalent of the 'right-click'
Colour Palette shortcut
'Up folder' shortcut on Macs
Valentine's clipart and graphics - uses for Command+D, Send to back and Screenshot key-shorts.
Use Preview to update repeated formats - how to use define as media placeholder short, select all, open file and open a selection of files.
Skip to my Lou: how to select random files

Say No to Autosave

Read more in my new book 'iWork for Mas OSX Cookbook' (2012)

Follow me on Twitter at iworkinpages  

Like my page I Work in Pages on Facebook 

and add me to your circles on Google+ 

Apple blossom photos by ©A.Anichkin/Rendezvous Media

Colour palette shortcut

Colour palette shortcut is Command+Shift+C



When you work with colours in Pages the colour palette opens automatically. For instance, to change the colour of text you click on the colour bar in Text Inspector.


The shortcut is useful when you want to skip making several movements and clicks with the mouse. For example, when I want to check CMYK count of text (pure black comes out crisp in print, while Licorice is a bit fuzzy) I click in the text, open colour palette with the shortcut and get the information I need.

Colour palette works and opens with the same shortcut not just in Pages, but in many other Mac applications where you mainly work with text, including Mail and TextEdit.

Lists of keyboard shortcuts are under Help menu in Pages and in System Preferences>Keyboard&Mouse. Here you can customise or create your own shortcuts and also reassign a particular shortcut to a different operation. For example, my Mac came with Command+Space assigned to opening Spotlight. I reassigned it to switching between different languages as I use it more frequently.


Please read the article on why it is important to use shortcuts and not just mouse:

Health and Efficiency: three serious reasons to use shortcuts

The article contains a list of other posts about keyboard shortcuts.

Up folder shortcut on Macs

I've been working on Macs since 1991 - almost without breaks, but in several jobs I had to switch to Windows, just because that was what was in the office.

Switching from Mac to Windows and back was surprisingly uncomplicated. Although I think working on a Mac is easier - and  more enjoyable - I found the 'up folder' option in the Windows toolbar very useful. It looks like this:



and allows you to jump from the folder you are currently in straight to the bigger one - in which the first one sits. This makes it easier to navigate through a large project where files are sorted in many different folders.

It took me some time to discover that Macs have the same option, except that it's a keyboard shortcut, not a toolbar or menu option. Press Command and hit the up arrow:


It's also useful to open quickly your Home folder from the Desktop. Many Macusers don't realise that Desktop in OSX is just another folder on your machine. When you switch on your Mac and all the folders are closed, you can, instead of going through the Finder menu, just press Command and hit the up arrow.

Please read this earlier article on why it is important to use keyboard shortcuts.

Health & Efficiency: three serious reasons to work with both hands

Combine mouse operations with keyboard shortcuts, because it is:

- MORE EFFICIENT
Generally, it is quicker to do most operations with keyboard shortcuts rather than with the mouse.

- HEALTHIER
Using both hands reduces the stress put on the mouse-hand. In extreme cases, if you work long hours dragging and clicking, repetitive strain syndrome may develop. It is painful and takes a long time to treat.
It is also healthier, because when you use both hands, you don't have a spare limb to pick up cigarettes, snacks or drinks.

- SAFER
Avoid tea and coffee spills - a major cause of computer damage.

Everybody has their own favourite shortcuts. So, try this and that to see what suits you better. Some may seem awkward at first, but once you've developed a habit you stop thinking, how do I do this, but hit shortcuts in the same unthinking way as you tie your shoelaces.

Keyboard shortcuts, if available, are shown next to menu items. Many others are in System Preferences>Keyboard and Mouse.




David Pogue's 'Mac OS X: The Missing Manual' has a rich commented appendix with loads of general Mac shortcuts, many of them little known, but very useful.

Please send me your own favourite shortcuts to publish here.

Links to articles about shortcuts on this blog:

My top Pages shortcut
Look after your hands useful shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts: hide and show invisibles and layout
Screenshots in Mac OS
Macmouse equivalent of right click
Deleting to right on Mac laptops
Colour Palette shortcut

Double-Docking: How To Keep Your Desktop Tidy

Some of my friends complain they find it difficult to keep the desktop free from clutter. When you work on a project or do extensive research on the internet Desktop often becomes littered with dozens of files - notes, stickies, downloads, screenshots, etc.

I must admit that I have a cluttered desktop too. However I found that a simple trick I call double-docking helps to limit if not to avoid desktop clutter. Double docking is putting your work files into the Dock or into the sidebar of your Finder windows.

DOCK I

If you look at the Dock, the strip with application icons at the bottom of your screen (you can put it on the right or on the left of your screen, or make it invisible when not needed), you can see a vertical line slightly to the right of centre.

For a long time I couldn't understand what it was for. By trial and error I found out that applications go to the left and collapsed files to the right.

You can drag your favourite applications to the Dock, left of the vertical stroke, but not to the right of it. And you can also drag files to the Dock, the section on the right of the vertical stroke, but not on the left. Collapsed files stay in the Dock only as long as they are open, but the ones you put in the Dock stay there for as long as you need them at hand. They become aliases of the real files. Switch off your Mac for the night, but your current work files will still be there in the Dock when you switch on again in the morning. So, put your current files in the Dock and move them away from the Desktop to a dedicated folder, Documents for example, to sort later.

When you want to open a file you click on it in the Dock and it opens in the same way as applications launch. When you are finished with that file drag its icon (alias) off the Dock - and it disappears in a puff of smoke, but the file itself stays where you put it.

DOCK II

This not the Dock itself, really, but the sidebar you can open or close in any finder window by clicking on the oval button in the top right corner of window. By default there are Documents, Applications, Desktop and a few other folders.

If you keep your current work files in a particular folder, say Current Project, you can drag that folder into the sidebar to allow yourself direct access to that folder. So if your Current Project folder is inside Documents>My files>Work>Clients>Current Project you can avoid going through numerous folders to reach the one you need by clicking once on it (its alias) in the sidebar.

The same can be done with files: a document you work on for several days or a template of a business letter, a flyer or an email - everybody has a set of documents which basically only need slight changes to be reused again and again. So these can go in the sidebar. When you don't need them anymore, just drag them off the sidebar - and they disappear in a puff of smoke, same as when you drag icons off the Dock. Again, it is only the alias that disappears, the file itself stays where you put it.

If your office has several Macs on a local network, you can put aliases of folders located on other computers in the sidebar. When you click on it your Mac connects to that other computer and opens the folder you need.

Changing items which appear in the sidebar can also be done by choosing Finder>Preferences in the Finder toolbar.

Do I hear people complaining that their Docks and sidebars are cluttered now?